Drawing lessons - illustrated lesson notes for teachers and students

Lesson in color

7-1 DECIDING ON COLOR

The basic palette I used for this painting was very simple light red, raw umber and yellow

ochre, cobalt blue and prussian blue - one red two yellows and two blues. The overall cast of

this painting is blue green. My concern to this stage (above) was to keep everything subdued

and to make sure the lights and darks (values) looked correct. I knew I would be adding

touches of highly saturated red and yellow hues at a later stage. How did I know this? I

remembered a painting by Rembrant that had a similar color scheme, all I needed were roughly

the same percentage of hues - although the values I wanted would be slightly higher. Why did I

use this scheme? The narrative involving an ageing Thor demanded clouds and sunset. Since I

also knew I would be showing areas of suntanned flesh I therefore resisted using red in the sky

and distant landscape. I wanted instead the blue grey of the storm.

When the painting was almost finished I added my toutches of cadmium red and cadmium

yellow for the highlights, specifically the handle of the hammer and the apprentice's toga. These

highly saturated colors have the effect of echoing and unifying all the other reds and yellows.

Drawing a parallel to music I could say they act like a pure single high major note, played an

octave its harmonic chord. Suddenly you then see all the reds and yellows unified and

reverberating about the canvas.

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