Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium (24 page)

BOOK: Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium

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E
VALUATING THE
E
FFECTS OF
C
OLOR
T
EMPERATURE

Selecting a relative temperature is the most general way we categorize colors. A color can be identified as warm or cool even before we give a name to its hue. Most watercolor artists arrange their palettes with warm on one side and cool on the other. This is not just for convenience. Thinking of color in terms of warm and cool is an excellent way to stay aware of the role color plays in realizing your intentions. How the color temperature balance of a painting is arranged can have a profound impact on the viewer’s experience. This is why it is so important to ask yourself:
Does this part of the painting require warm or cool colors?
The following paintings make deliberate use of warm/cool relationships to enhance the artist’s purpose.

TORGEIR SCHJØLBERG,
LYS I MØRKE
, 2004
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
27½ × 35½ INCHES (70 × 90 CM)

In Kosa’s
Boat Haven
opposite, the warm and cool were roughly equal in area. Here, however, Schjølberg wants the cool to dominate the scene. The result is a palpable chill that leaves us eager to get indoors, where all the warmth is concentrated. This is precisely where form and content overlap.

Imagine the scene with the color temperatures inverted, as in this digitally altered version of the image. The mood changes dramatically. Now I’m not so sure I want to go inside, after all.

TOM HOFFMANN,
LOS TAMALES MEJORES,
2010
WATERCOLOR ON ARCHES COLD PRESS PAPER
10 × 10 INCHES (25 × 25 CM)

The warms represent the largest area of this Oaxaca street scene, but their main role is just to provide a frame for the cool center of action. This is the opposite of the arrangement in Schjølberg’s
Lys I Mørke
, on
this page
, but the result is the same. Color temperature dominance works to focus attention.

LESLIE FRONTZ,
IN PORT,
2003
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
11½ × 8½ (29 × 22 CM)

Relative to each other, the sky in this painting is cool and the ground is warm. Notice how the artist has located the warmest features against the cool background, and the coolest against the warm background. Less-intense cools, like the shadows along the ground, reach into the warm area, and less-intense warms, like the crane booms, reach into the cool. These juxtapositions help to stitch the composition together, at the same time that they enliven the surface of the page.

ALVARO CASTAGNET,
FLINDERS STATION, MELBOURNE,
2008
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
14 × 22 INCHES (36 × 56 CM)

The division between warm and cool is more pronounced in this busy scene than it is in Frontz’s
In Port,
on
this page
, but Castagnet has taken care to insert a few cools within the warm zone, and vice versa. What do you think motivated his decision?

TREVOR CHAMBERLAIN,
FELUCCA JOURNEY, EGYPT,
1993
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
14 × 10 INCHES (35 × 25 CM)

Looking at this painting beside a black and white version reveals the role the warm and cool placement plays in creating a convincing illusion of light and space. Pay attention to whether the shape you are observing has a noticeable color temperature.

Although the values are correct, the monochrome image tells us nothing about reflected light. Chamberlain’s observation of color temperature changes is responsible for the feeling of being in the same space as the white-robed figure and the vastness of the open air beyond.

Evaluate the subject.
This image is just right for a warm/cool analysis. With the exception of the yellow in the sky and the green tree, everything could be made with an orange and a blue.

Select your two colors and paint the purest warm and cool lights.
I chose pyrrole orange for the warm and ultramarine for the cool. I wanted to locate the purest warms and cools right at the beginning, so I would have them as a basis for comparison. The tiny lights on the hillside looked to me like intense versions of the colors, so I made a loose pattern of strokes in both colors.