Gruppe
“BASIC PRINCIPLES OF COLOR IN NATURE
“When you work outdoors, you only need to worry about a few basic concepts. 1. The nature of the eye, 2. The local color of the object 3. The color of outdoor light, 4. The color of the atmosphere itself, and 5. The effect of neighboring colors on one another.”
Wow! A lot packed into that. Probably, when he mentions the nature of the eye, he is talking about cones, creating colors with bias, and keeping the eye moving. 2-5 seem to speak about the influences that affect the appearance of color. Light, atmosphere, and reflected light all alter the appearance of local color to some degree. But why do we have to worry about all that? Isn’t observation our best guide to what colors are in our complex and changing environment? I’d be surprised if Gruppe meant artists to paint by rule rather than observation, and I saw no sign of the approach of rule in his book. Perhaps he just means us to be aware that all of these factors are present when we observe colors.
Showing posts with label Emile Gruppe'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emile Gruppe'. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 10
Gruppe
“A NATURAL WAY TO SEE
When I tell you to look all over a scene in order to see color, I’m not giving you a professional “trick”. Think for a minute: how do you normally look at the world? You see color because you move your eyes, constantly giving them new objects and colors to look at. The cones are always stimulated. Staring at a spot–something you habitually do when you draw or paint-is an unnatural way of looking. So when you stare and paint, you lose the sparkle that comes with a casual glance. Train yourself to keep your eyes moving, to compare area with area–and you’ll find that there are no nondescript colors in nature.”
This bit is confusing. While I agree that natural seeing involve movement of the eye, and I agree that it is easier to see color when moving the eye, I believe that there is a difference between natural seeing and the way that an artist looks for color. It has something to do with the way the brain shifts from seeing trees and grass to seeing color shapes. So, while the cones may be more stimulated by keeping the eye moving, the artist still needs to be seeing things flatly, in terms of color and shape, and not allowing the brain to interpret objects. You need to be in artist’s mind.
“A NATURAL WAY TO SEE
When I tell you to look all over a scene in order to see color, I’m not giving you a professional “trick”. Think for a minute: how do you normally look at the world? You see color because you move your eyes, constantly giving them new objects and colors to look at. The cones are always stimulated. Staring at a spot–something you habitually do when you draw or paint-is an unnatural way of looking. So when you stare and paint, you lose the sparkle that comes with a casual glance. Train yourself to keep your eyes moving, to compare area with area–and you’ll find that there are no nondescript colors in nature.”
This bit is confusing. While I agree that natural seeing involve movement of the eye, and I agree that it is easier to see color when moving the eye, I believe that there is a difference between natural seeing and the way that an artist looks for color. It has something to do with the way the brain shifts from seeing trees and grass to seeing color shapes. So, while the cones may be more stimulated by keeping the eye moving, the artist still needs to be seeing things flatly, in terms of color and shape, and not allowing the brain to interpret objects. You need to be in artist’s mind.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 9
EYE FATIGUE
You might think that the best way to analyze an area of color is to stare at it intently.. But that’s just the wrong way to do it. The longer you stare at an area, the grayer it gets. Your eye becomes used to the color. It fatigues; your sense of color dies. The only way to judge the color of an object is to compare it with the color of objects near it.
"Let’s say, for example, that you want to determine the color of the sky at the horizon. It can be anything from purple to green. But to see it, you should first look over your head for a few second s at the color of the zenith. Then quickly lower your eyes. For a few seconds, you’ll see vivid color near the horizon. Then the color will rapidly fade. If you want to get the character of that day, you should paint the horizon as you see it for those few seconds. That’s why I constantly move my eyes over a scene, comparing values and colors. If I’m stumped by an area, I work on another spot; then, when I turn back to the trouble-some place, I’m usually able to see the color."
What can I say about these words of wisdom? Keep the eye moving. It really works. The more I practice this, the more it helps.
You might think that the best way to analyze an area of color is to stare at it intently.. But that’s just the wrong way to do it. The longer you stare at an area, the grayer it gets. Your eye becomes used to the color. It fatigues; your sense of color dies. The only way to judge the color of an object is to compare it with the color of objects near it.
"Let’s say, for example, that you want to determine the color of the sky at the horizon. It can be anything from purple to green. But to see it, you should first look over your head for a few second s at the color of the zenith. Then quickly lower your eyes. For a few seconds, you’ll see vivid color near the horizon. Then the color will rapidly fade. If you want to get the character of that day, you should paint the horizon as you see it for those few seconds. That’s why I constantly move my eyes over a scene, comparing values and colors. If I’m stumped by an area, I work on another spot; then, when I turn back to the trouble-some place, I’m usually able to see the color."
What can I say about these words of wisdom? Keep the eye moving. It really works. The more I practice this, the more it helps.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 8
Gruppe
“If I am stumped by an area, I work on another spot; then, when I turn back to the trouble-some place, I’m usually able to see color.”
This speaks to eye fatigue. That is, the tendency of the rods and cones to need some time to recover. Generally, the recovery time is seconds, but I suppose that if you are painting an area of gray sky and it starts to look grayer and grayer, moving to some other area would help refresh the eye. Even more, it would let you think about something different for a while, which is helpful in any context when you are stuck.
“If I am stumped by an area, I work on another spot; then, when I turn back to the trouble-some place, I’m usually able to see color.”
This speaks to eye fatigue. That is, the tendency of the rods and cones to need some time to recover. Generally, the recovery time is seconds, but I suppose that if you are painting an area of gray sky and it starts to look grayer and grayer, moving to some other area would help refresh the eye. Even more, it would let you think about something different for a while, which is helpful in any context when you are stuck.
Friday, March 19, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 7
Gruppe:
“You might think that the best way to analyze an area of color is to stare at it intently. But that’s just the wrong way to do it. The longer you stare at an area, the grayer it gets. Your eye becomes used to the color; it fatigues, your sense of color dies. The only way to judge the color of an object is to compare it with the color of objects near it.”
This is one of those passages that continues to yield new meaning with every reading. Lately I’ve been looking closely at color fields, those large areas of color that at first appear the same, but reward further looking with variations. A large meadow, the sky, a road, a group of trees. The idea of not staring, but keeping the eye moving is very helpful. As you move your eye across the wall in a room, you begin to notice differences in the color as you move across the color field.
Another way to interpret this passage is to consider a color in comparison to things around it, rather than within itself. Thus, how light or dark something is depends on what’s around it. Colors can be compared to one another, giving more clarity to exactly what kind of blue is in the sky or what gray on the trunk of a tree. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have to watch out or our paintings will be 80 percent green. Comparing greens, however, gives us a multiplicity of colors.
“You might think that the best way to analyze an area of color is to stare at it intently. But that’s just the wrong way to do it. The longer you stare at an area, the grayer it gets. Your eye becomes used to the color; it fatigues, your sense of color dies. The only way to judge the color of an object is to compare it with the color of objects near it.”
This is one of those passages that continues to yield new meaning with every reading. Lately I’ve been looking closely at color fields, those large areas of color that at first appear the same, but reward further looking with variations. A large meadow, the sky, a road, a group of trees. The idea of not staring, but keeping the eye moving is very helpful. As you move your eye across the wall in a room, you begin to notice differences in the color as you move across the color field.
Another way to interpret this passage is to consider a color in comparison to things around it, rather than within itself. Thus, how light or dark something is depends on what’s around it. Colors can be compared to one another, giving more clarity to exactly what kind of blue is in the sky or what gray on the trunk of a tree. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have to watch out or our paintings will be 80 percent green. Comparing greens, however, gives us a multiplicity of colors.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 6
Gruppe:
"One of the first things I discovered was that the amount of color you see is a result not so much of what you look at--but of how you look at it. To help you understandthe idea, we should first examin how the eye operates.
"The eye sees through color cones. It has three sets of cones: one for red, one for blue, and one for yellow. From these colors, it creates everything you see in the world. For the eye to be excited and stimulated--and for pictures to have snap, the viewer should see a bias toward the red, blue, or yellow in your color. The eye should be able to dissect the colors. That is one reason black and the earth colors have little effect on the eye. Black, for example, is opaque. It's just a black and the eye can't decipher it, can't break it into recognizeable color parts."
Gruppe here is probably projecting his own explanation for the observations he has made in his painting. M perspective, based on my research into how the eye works, is that the eye is indeed much more stimulated when there is a bias in a color toward red, yellow, or blue. But this has more to do with how the brain interprets stimuli from the cones. Cones are connected in groups to the nerve cells behind the retina in such a way that the eye/brain is always making comparisons rather than measuring absolute levels of color. The brain also is more interested in variations and change in the environment. so a flat field of color is less interesting than a varied one, and a color with no bias toward red, blue, or yellow is equally stimulating to all the cones, therefore less interesting to the eye/brain. Because research is continually turning up new information, even this perspective may be outdated. But the useful part is: stimulate the eye/brain. Creat variation. Create colors that have bias.
Black may still be useful for creating contrast with another color. Black is also useful when the entertainment of the design is not in color, but in shape. Earth colors can be useful as long as they are varied and not used straight out of the tube.
"One of the first things I discovered was that the amount of color you see is a result not so much of what you look at--but of how you look at it. To help you understandthe idea, we should first examin how the eye operates.
"The eye sees through color cones. It has three sets of cones: one for red, one for blue, and one for yellow. From these colors, it creates everything you see in the world. For the eye to be excited and stimulated--and for pictures to have snap, the viewer should see a bias toward the red, blue, or yellow in your color. The eye should be able to dissect the colors. That is one reason black and the earth colors have little effect on the eye. Black, for example, is opaque. It's just a black and the eye can't decipher it, can't break it into recognizeable color parts."
Gruppe here is probably projecting his own explanation for the observations he has made in his painting. M perspective, based on my research into how the eye works, is that the eye is indeed much more stimulated when there is a bias in a color toward red, yellow, or blue. But this has more to do with how the brain interprets stimuli from the cones. Cones are connected in groups to the nerve cells behind the retina in such a way that the eye/brain is always making comparisons rather than measuring absolute levels of color. The brain also is more interested in variations and change in the environment. so a flat field of color is less interesting than a varied one, and a color with no bias toward red, blue, or yellow is equally stimulating to all the cones, therefore less interesting to the eye/brain. Because research is continually turning up new information, even this perspective may be outdated. But the useful part is: stimulate the eye/brain. Creat variation. Create colors that have bias.
Black may still be useful for creating contrast with another color. Black is also useful when the entertainment of the design is not in color, but in shape. Earth colors can be useful as long as they are varied and not used straight out of the tube.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 5
Gruppe
"Often you must sacrifice one set of relationships in order to emphasize another more essential one."
This speaks to the limitations of paint when expressing the varied and wide-ranging world of light. If you have nine values in which to express the world, you will need to simplify the complexity of what you see. Otherwise, you will run out of values. If the lightest color you have to express a light source is light yellow, then all other yellows must be subordinated to that one, or the light source won't appear to be light.
There's another aspect to the expression of relationships. Our brains are attracted to variety and contrast. If all relationships are expressed with equal emphasis, the painting that results is one of scattered interest. If essential relationships are expressed clearly and others are subordinated, then the painting shines with expression of the artist's intention.
It is useful, in either case, to know what your painting is about.
"Often you must sacrifice one set of relationships in order to emphasize another more essential one."
This speaks to the limitations of paint when expressing the varied and wide-ranging world of light. If you have nine values in which to express the world, you will need to simplify the complexity of what you see. Otherwise, you will run out of values. If the lightest color you have to express a light source is light yellow, then all other yellows must be subordinated to that one, or the light source won't appear to be light.
There's another aspect to the expression of relationships. Our brains are attracted to variety and contrast. If all relationships are expressed with equal emphasis, the painting that results is one of scattered interest. If essential relationships are expressed clearly and others are subordinated, then the painting shines with expression of the artist's intention.
It is useful, in either case, to know what your painting is about.
Monday, March 15, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 4
Gruppe
"When painting light trees like birches, don't darken the sky too much to show them up."
It would be pretty easy to overemphasize these contrasts. Along the Boise River, I notice that, while the trunks of the birches in sunlight arewhite, in shade they are darker, and the branches against the sky are significantly dark. The key here seems to be to observe the relationships, and not to exaggerate them out of proportion.
"When painting light trees like birches, don't darken the sky too much to show them up."
It would be pretty easy to overemphasize these contrasts. Along the Boise River, I notice that, while the trunks of the birches in sunlight arewhite, in shade they are darker, and the branches against the sky are significantly dark. The key here seems to be to observe the relationships, and not to exaggerate them out of proportion.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 3
“If the values are wrong, the best color work in the world could never make the picture look true.”
Can you alter a value pattern? Lots of artists talk about doing it. Or moving a light object in front of a dark object. There may be ways of playing around with values in a realistic landscape, adding shadows here, eliminating shapes there, rearranging things, creating counterchange. I think here, that Gruppe must be talking about the precise relationship of values between distant objects and near ones, and between values within an object, so that the value relationships express a consistent quality of light within a scene.
In my personal experience, there are paintings that when I view them, the value/color relationships look spot-on. That isn’t to say that they are copied from nature (impossible, really, within the color space of paint), but that they are so internally consistent as to leave the impression of reality. Get even one of these relationships a little bit off, in comparison with the others, and the illusion falls apart. Gruppe here is saying that value is the most important relationship, color less important. It seems to me that color is an area where the artist can play a bit.
Can you alter a value pattern? Lots of artists talk about doing it. Or moving a light object in front of a dark object. There may be ways of playing around with values in a realistic landscape, adding shadows here, eliminating shapes there, rearranging things, creating counterchange. I think here, that Gruppe must be talking about the precise relationship of values between distant objects and near ones, and between values within an object, so that the value relationships express a consistent quality of light within a scene.
In my personal experience, there are paintings that when I view them, the value/color relationships look spot-on. That isn’t to say that they are copied from nature (impossible, really, within the color space of paint), but that they are so internally consistent as to leave the impression of reality. Get even one of these relationships a little bit off, in comparison with the others, and the illusion falls apart. Gruppe here is saying that value is the most important relationship, color less important. It seems to me that color is an area where the artist can play a bit.
Monday, March 8, 2010
GRUPPE ON COLOR, 2
“Reserve the lightest lights and darkest darks and bring values together.”
This is one of those bits of advice that you hear now and again, and no one ever explains why. Here’s one explanation that I’ve heard, and even repeated in those moments when I believed it (paraphrased): White has no color information in it. If you want the eye to be stimulated by color, you must put color in your whites. But if that were the case, why would watercolorists be repeatedly advised to save lots of whites, even to the finish of the painting? ??
The trouble with taking advice at face value is that the reasons for the advice get lost. Why would watercolor artists be advised to save whites, while oil painters are advised to get rid of them? One possible reason is the chalky effect that white can have on an oil painting, another subject which deserves some discussion... another time. Also, the white of watercolor paper is seldom a strong white, usually having a little warm off-white color to it.
Darks could be similar: in lending a warm or cool cast to the dark colors, you allow the eye some color information. Watercolors simply aren’t capable of making the strong darks that oils are, although sometimes artists get close. Even so, watercolor darks with no color to them, no warm or cool tendency, have a muddy look to them, and become unappealing pretty quickly.
So maybe the real reason to keep the pure white out of the oil painting and the deepest dark out of the oil and watercolor is that they just don’t look all that good.
What do you think?
This is one of those bits of advice that you hear now and again, and no one ever explains why. Here’s one explanation that I’ve heard, and even repeated in those moments when I believed it (paraphrased): White has no color information in it. If you want the eye to be stimulated by color, you must put color in your whites. But if that were the case, why would watercolorists be repeatedly advised to save lots of whites, even to the finish of the painting? ??
The trouble with taking advice at face value is that the reasons for the advice get lost. Why would watercolor artists be advised to save whites, while oil painters are advised to get rid of them? One possible reason is the chalky effect that white can have on an oil painting, another subject which deserves some discussion... another time. Also, the white of watercolor paper is seldom a strong white, usually having a little warm off-white color to it.
Darks could be similar: in lending a warm or cool cast to the dark colors, you allow the eye some color information. Watercolors simply aren’t capable of making the strong darks that oils are, although sometimes artists get close. Even so, watercolor darks with no color to them, no warm or cool tendency, have a muddy look to them, and become unappealing pretty quickly.
So maybe the real reason to keep the pure white out of the oil painting and the deepest dark out of the oil and watercolor is that they just don’t look all that good.
What do you think?
Sunday, February 21, 2010
EMILE GRUPPE’ ON COLOR, 1
Notes and thoughts on a classic title.
Here’s what I’ve been working on in the studio. It has nothing to do with the topic; just thought I’d share.
I’ve been reading and studying this book written and illustrated by Emile Gruppe’, and have found much worthy of thought and discussion. This will probably take many posts, so here’s the first.
Gruppe’ grew up with an artist father, and he also studied under two well-known landscape painters: Charles Hawthorne, and John Carlson. This gave him lots of material to discuss, and he quotes both these teachers throughout the book. The nice thing about Gruppe’s book, though, is that he is a much more accessible writer than Carlson, and much more forthcoming than Hawthorne. And he appears to have compiled the best of the ideas from both teachers. So, here go some of his thoughts.
Here’s what I’ve been working on in the studio. It has nothing to do with the topic; just thought I’d share.
I’ve been reading and studying this book written and illustrated by Emile Gruppe’, and have found much worthy of thought and discussion. This will probably take many posts, so here’s the first.
Gruppe’ grew up with an artist father, and he also studied under two well-known landscape painters: Charles Hawthorne, and John Carlson. This gave him lots of material to discuss, and he quotes both these teachers throughout the book. The nice thing about Gruppe’s book, though, is that he is a much more accessible writer than Carlson, and much more forthcoming than Hawthorne. And he appears to have compiled the best of the ideas from both teachers. So, here go some of his thoughts.
Gruppe’: “Paint the tree in front of you. Note how it relates to things around it, interacts with the forest, branches react to each other within the tree itself.”
This idea has to do with painting the particular rather than the general. Of course, the most particular would be to paint every leaf and branch of the tree that’s visible from your position. And the least particular would be the lollypop. So... somewhere in between the two is a happy place (different for every artist) where observed particularities can be recorded, creating almost a tree portrait.
This thought seems to leave out a sense of design. That is, the artist makes choices. Which leafy masses are particularly characteristic of the tree? Which shapes serve the design of the painting? Gruppe’ seems to be responding to nature primarily as observer and less as designer. Again, there is probably a wide-ranging scale among artists, with the copyist (flesh-and-bone camera) at one end, and the highly abstract painter at the other (in which the inspiration of the tree may be barely, if at all discernable), and each individual artist falling somewhere in between. Interesting choices to make consciously.
Another dimension of this element that interests me is the ways in which a particular tree is a better representative of universal “treeness” than a very generalized lollipop tree is. For sure a lollipop tree includes the idea of trunk and leaf mass. But it leaves out many other ideas that are part of being a tree. It leaves out branches. It leaves out the broadening of the trunk where roots go into the ground. It leaves out any hint of growth pattern. And of course, it shows nothing of the tree’s interaction with its environment, which shows it to be a living, responsive thing. By painting the patterns of a particular tree, the artist expresses more about all trees.
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