Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium (25 page)

Add the next darker warms.
The hillside warms up a little as it moves to the right. Now the warm darks begin, with their temperature cooling somewhat as they step back in space.

Add the more neutral darks.
The darkest neutrals add to the illusion of substance. Only the clouds remain to be added.

Add the finishing touches.
The clouds are mostly cool, with soft, warm edges.

TOM HOFFMANN,
OAXACA ROOFTOPS
, 2011
WATERCOLOR ON ARCHES COLD PRESS PAPER
11 × 15 INCHES (28 × 38 CM)

Here’s an exercise for exploring the concepts we’ve touched on regarding warm/cool relationships: First, limit your palette to just two
colors—one distinctly warm (yellow ocher, gold, rich green gold, cadmium red light, pyrrole orange, quinacridone burnt orange, and so forth), and the other distinctly cool (any blue, violet, perylene green, hunter green, pthalo green, and so forth). Then, make a version of a picture in which for every element you decide how warm or cool it should be. The purest form of the warm color would be reserved for the warmest part of the scene, and the purest form of the cool would only be used for the coolest part. Everything else would involve mixtures of the warm and cool colors. (The second-warmest shape, for example, would have a little bit of the cool mixed in.)

To get started, look at the image you’ve chosen to see if there is any content that you automatically think of as either cool or warm. The sky on a clear day, for example, would obviously be cool, as would the ocean. A bare light bulb or fire, on the other hand, would be warm. You might ask:
What would be the warmest part of this scene?
Then you have something to compare everything else to. If you decided, for example, that a brick wall in sunlight was going to be very warm, then the shadow on the wall would be somewhat cooler. The shadow on a clump of foliage would be even cooler, since the foliage in sunlight is cooler than the brick in sunlight. It’s all relative, just like value. When you are deciding where on the temperature scale to place a particular subject, try looking for something a little cooler and something a little warmer than the part you are about to paint. It helps to locate each new bit between two parts to which you are already committed.

KATE BARBER,
NOSE TO NOSE
, 2010
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
22 × 30 INCHES (56 × 76 CM)

Something tells me the subject was a black and white dog,
not
a maroon and blue dog. The artist could see that there was plenty of room for interpretation. Her dog manages to be fanciful and perfectly believable at the same time.

On a sunny day, I enjoy the challenge of trying to match the
color of the sky. It is rarely just one convenient blue, like pure ultramarine or cerulean. Sometimes it takes as many as four colors to come up with something that looks just right. As entertaining as this can be, from the point of view of what the painting needs it is not really necessary. As long as I don’t make the sky too dark, there are any number of blues that will work just fine.

When it comes to creating an effective illusion of light and space, reading the values well is a much more useful skill than color matching. For the sake of the coherence of the page, it is more important for the colors you choose to
work together
than be accurate. What works in the real world or in a photograph does not necessarily work in a painting. While in front of your subject, ask yourself:
When should I depart from accuracy?
Colors often need adjustment before they serve your purposes. As we have seen, limiting or expanding your palette can put emphasis where you want it in a painting. A good example is the notorious “wall of green” that landscape painters so often face. Where I live, in the Northwestern United States, most of the wilderness is covered in conifers. Great swaths of many scenes are uninterrupted green, which could be tiresome for both painter and viewer. I always manage to see some variations in that tapestry of green, and I am happy to exaggerate wherever a little extra color is needed. In the image opposite, Kate Barber takes off from a black and white source, turning up the hints of color she discerns.

Adjustments can also go in the other direction. In
Snow on a Queens Bridge,
this page
, Jonathan Janson subdues the differences in color to emphasize the effects of the storm.

Limiting the palette, as we have seen, can go far toward creating a sense of harmony. Combined with an awareness of the role of
color temperature, using just a few colors may help resolve a difficult composition. Choosing to emphasize the colors that contribute to a particular mood, as I have done in
Entrance to the Underworld,
opposite, is an example of deliberately departing from accuracy.

JONATHAN JANSON,
SNOW ON A QUEENS BRIDGE
, 2005
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
10⅝ × 14½ INCHES (27 × 37 CM)

The artist has softened edges and neutralized colors until the snowstorm has at least as much presence as the bridge in this painting. The feeling is accurate, while the appearance is probably not.

TOM HOFFMANN,
ENTRANCE TO THE UNDERWORLD,
2007
WATERCOLOR ON SAUNDERS COLD PRESS PAPER
22 × 15 INCHES (56 × 38 CM)

The world beneath the viaduct is certainly not all blue, but it feels like it is. This cool-dominant, limited palette creates a contemplative mood and gives coherence to a complex composition.

BERNIE BECKMAN,
MONSON SLATE QUARRY
, 2006
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
30 × 44 INCHES (76 × 112 CM)

This is an expanded, rather than a limited, palette. The bold color is not accurate, but it seems perfectly suited to the spirited brushwork.

While it is true that less can be more, sometimes
more
is more. In the image above, Bernie Beckman adheres to standard landscape
colors in the trees and sky at the top of the painting, and then makes a bold leap from the cliff edge into a wide-open palette for the rocks.

Don’t forget to ask yourself:
What
color are the darks?
Questioning reality is especially important when working from photographs. As we have seen, real does not necessarily mean correct. During our discussion about value in
chapter 4
, we saw how darks in photos often swallow up information. They also tend to look perfectly black. In a painting where everything else has a noticeable color identity, making the darks all black leaves them stranded. Without the benefit of the cohesive force of the overall palette, the darkest darks only connect to each other. They can form a separate pattern that floats above the page like a flock of raucous crows. In the Oaxacan Rooftops image,
this page
, the darks that have a definite color temperature are fully integrated into the picture, while the few that are a completely neutral black look as if they are perched there temporarily.