The Painter in oil

Complementary colors mixed, or so placed that small portions of them are side by side,
as in hatching or stippling, give the tertiaries or grays by the mixing of the rays. The Law
of Color Contrast. - “When two dissimilar colors are placed in contiguity, they are always
modified in such a manner as to increase their dissimilarity.”]
Warm and Cold Color. - Red and yellow are called warm colors, and blue is called
a cold color. This is not that the color is really cold or warm, of course, but that they
convey the impression of warmth and coldness. It is mainly due to association probably,
for those things which are warm contain a large proportion of yellow or red, and those
which are cold contain more blue. There is a predominance of cold color in winter and of
the warm colors in summer.
From the primaries various degrees of warmth and coldness characterize the
secondaries and tertiaries, as they contain more or less proportionately of the warm or
cold primaries.
In contrasting colors these qualities have great effect.
Color Juxtaposition. - In studying the facts of color contrast and color
juxtaposition you will find that two pigments, if mixed in the ordinary way, will have one
effect; and the same pigments in the same proportions, mixed not by stirring them into
one mass, but by laying separate spots or lines of the pigment side by side, produce quite
another. The gain in brilliancy by the latter mode of mixing is great, because you have
mixed the color rays which are really light rays, instead of mixing the pigment as in the
usual way. You have really mixed the color by mixing light as far as is possible to do it
with pigment. You have taken advantage of all the light reflecting power of the pigment
on which the color effect depends.
Each pigment, being nearly pure, reflects the rays of color peculiar to it, unaffected by
the neutralizing effect of another color mixed with it; while the neutralizing power of the
other color being side by side with it, the waves or vibrations of the color rays blend by
overlapping as they come side by side to the eye; and so the color, made up of the two
waves as they blend, is so much more vibrant and full of life.
”Yellow and Purple.” - It is this principle which is the cause of the peculiarity in
the technique of certain “Impressionist” painters. The “yellow lights and purple
shadows” is only placing by the side of a color that color which will be most effective in
forcing its note.
Brilliancy is what these men are after, and they get it by the study of the law of color
contrast and color juxtaposition. The effect of complementaries in color contrast is what
you must study for this, for the theory of it. For the practice of it, study carefully and
faithfully the actual colors in nature, and try to see what are the real notes, what the
really component colors, of any color contrast or light contrast which you see. Purple
shadows and yellow light re-enforcing each other you will find to exist constantly in
nature. Refine your color perception, and you will be able to get the result without the
obviousness of the means which has brought down the condemnation on it. Closer study
of the relations is the way to find the art of concealing art.
But yellow and purple are not the only complementaries. All through the range of
color, the secondaries and tertiaries as well as the primaries, this principle of
complement plays a part. There is no color effect you can use in painting which does not
have to do, more or less, with the placing of the complementary color in mass, to