Values create dimension, but color usually receives all of the attention. When painting with oils, placing dark and light pigments next to each other can be an accident waiting to happen.
When I'm teaching, I tell the story of this painting for two reasons. First of all, if you want a good solid color structure, you have to have a solid development in values, dark and light. Second, if you have a good design, don't leave it if you fail to render it to its full extent the first time around. Remember it's the design that's important. Try and try till you get the thing to work. That's why The Pattern Makers is a key picture in my painting career.
Many people say they got into their career by accident. The other side of that is that your career is an accident waiting to happen.
Water and stones. Those are the unpromising ingredients of two very different endeavors... painting, because artists' pigments are made from fluids... mixed together with powdered stones to give color... and the other is alchemy, the stone the ultimate goal.
It seems obvious that colors vary according to lights, because when any color is placed in the shade, it appears to be different from the same color which is located in light. Shade makes color dark, whereas light makes color bright where it strikes.
Give up the idea of 'color' for awhile! Consider masses - values, only... One dark and one light place in every picture.
The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color.
You look at the U.S. budget deficit, and you cannot help but feel that this is a serious accident waiting to happen. And not just a serious U.S. accident, but a serious global accident.
Raja Ravi Varma was one of the few Indians who not only understood women but also represented them exquisitely in a single dimension within four frames, infusing each painting with life through the use of color.
Put light against light - you have nothing. Put dark against dark - you have nothing. It's the contrast of light and dark that each give the other one meaning.
The light and the dark are the same. They share. They really do rub up against each other, and they are extraordinarily familiar with each other. They are actually friends.
There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones.
Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. You go into the first room and it's dark, completely dark. You stumble around, bumping into the furniture. Gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is. And finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch and turn it on. Suddenly, it's all illuminated and you can see exactly where you were. Then you enter the next dark room.
Hue does not refer to how light, dark, or intense, but only what kind of color: what hue. It takes all three aspects to make a color, therefore 'red' is not a color, but only one aspect, the hue, of some partially defined color.
My understanding – of course, I’m not a philosopher or a scientist – of an aspect of Goethe’s theory of color is that he felt that color came out of tension between light and dark. I think that is very appropriate when you think about the kind of color that I shoot.
You can stick with a few clear-cut values, which are stronger than a multitude of values and will obviously yield a stronger painting. But not all subjects or light conditions appear that way... be sensible and paint with values that are appropriate and faithful to your subject.
Painting is drawing, with the additional means of color. Painting without drawing is just 'coloriness,' color excitement. To think of color for color's sake is like thinking of sound for sound's sake. Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.