A lot of artists struggle with colour. How to choose them, mix and paint them. Inevitably, there are going to be small disasters. Some colours do not blend easily, others too well. When a painter moves away from black and white, it is all too tempting to use bright primary colours that either clash or turn anonymous beige. The smallest addition of one can radically alter the feel of a picture. Not always in a good way. One should take time, to select colours for a picture, there is much to consider, not only which shade or tint. The style, the look of it. Are you aiming for showy, subtle or cryptic? Colour can help you decide. There is an element of mystery attached to it.
For some painters, red equals danger. It dominates like no other. So, they treat it with kid gloves. Others slap it on, like sunscreen on a beach but they risk getting burned. Staying on the right side of garish takes great skill and bravery. A bigger mistake is colour avoidance. Not just in a certain painting, but across the board. I loathe hearing “I don’t do orange” or “I have trouble with yellow” because it doesn’t make sense. You need all the colours. Ignore this, and the absence is not only seen, it’s felt. Colours have meaning: historical, emotional and spiritual. Purple is associated with richness and exclusivity, even decadence. From designer chocolates to the garments of kings and emperors. Before synthetic dyes, purple was the hardest colour to produce. It was made by crushing the shells of certain sea snails. To wear it was proof of your authority and buying power. Peasants were forbidden from purple. There is an element of danger attached to it.
Pink is seen as a feel-good colour, perhaps a superficial one. It reminds me of candyfloss and all things kitsch, but also dog roses, and November sunsets. Use lots of pink in your pictures and people might put you in a box marked sentimental, or unserious. Perhaps you don’t care what people think, that might explain why you use so much pink.
Not enough thought goes into selecting colours. I’m not against having fun or experimenting. But don’t use colours straight out of the tube- unless you’re mixing them on the canvas. As an onlooker, I want to recognise something in a landscape painting that says - you remember this right? This is how it is. Even in a totally abstract piece, there must be an element of truth. I‘ve never been to Antarctica, but I imagine how it would look. There would be some beautiful blues, not just in the water, but in the ice. Yes, a lot of blue, and somewhere an indication of space. Perhaps a whale, dwarfed by the vastness of an inky ocean. Or, a silvery penguin leaping up onto an ice floe, surrounded by ice floes. And I want to feel cold, instantly.
Certain colour combinations are a risk, even a provocation. I’ve put that purple next to this red - what are you going to do about it? Eh? But put a deep orange, and pale lemon, next to them and you have instant autumn. Now, it’s not threatening, add a little brown and it’s in danger of becoming cosy. And then there are the non-colours. Grey usually softens a picture, it is subtle, and more than useful to a painter - I recommend keeping several greys handy. White, adds detail or highlight. Black can be a focus - a hole, an end, or death. It can also exaggerate a nearby colour that might go unnoticed. As with red, painters can be overcautious with black, but it wasn’t always this way. Look at still lifes from the 16th and 17th centuries, there was no shortage of black. This was pre-electricity though, when there literally was more black everywhere: in the home, along the street and in the sky.
PLJ Designs
Comments