CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE -- THE GREEN PROBLEM

Light From Above, 18" x 12"

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published as "It's Not Easy Being Green" )

Red is intense, yellow is cheerful, blue is peaceful, pink is romantic and green is -- a problem. Artists often express consternation over using the color green. It’s as though this one color, so predominant in the landscape, holds some mystery that artists must master. Despite its connotation as a restful, natural color, it can be tricky to use.

Green is found at the very center of the visible spectrum and is the hue to which our eyes are most responsive. We’re able to distinguish more shades of green than any other color, therefore, people have an intuitive, experiential understanding of green, whether consciously or not. This innate awareness can make using accurate and interesting greens a challenge. The most naïve observer can easily spot the wrong green used in a painting. Often the artist knows something is off, but has trouble finding the correction.

Santa Fe, 9" x 18"

WARM OR COOL

Residing between the primary colors yellow and blue, directly astride the cusp of warm and cool temperatures on the color wheel, green cannot easily be classified as simply warm or cool. Ask anyone to divide the color wheel in half, with warm on one side and cool on the other, and almost invariably they will draw a line placing yellow on the warm side and yellow-green on the cool. But isolate this same yellow-green and they’ll identify it as a warm color. In the surrounding colors of a painting green may function as either a warm or cool color. This variety of temperature may be part of what makes green challenging to use.

If temperature is the primary issue, why is purple -- made from warm red and cool blue -- not subject to the same complaints among artists? Perhaps part of the reason is that purple resides squarely in the cool half of the color wheel. Add to that the fact that the yellow component of green adds intensity to the mix, while the red factor in purple is related more to temperature. Intensity and temperature are separate issues. The red in purple makes a concentrated color, but not one that’s necessarily intense, while an emphasis on yellow can make green extremely intense. The intensity of yellows used to make green may sometimes make for garish, surrealistic greens. As a result, some artists charge pastel manufacturers with making unnatural or brassy greens.

“So what?” responds Bob Strohsahl, maker of Great American Artworks pastels. “As long as manufacturers are making a full line of reliably standard greens in addition to the ‘garish’ ones, ‘unnatural’ greens might be useful to some artists.” However, he notes that when making pastels, green pigments tend to drift toward blue as they lighten. “The trick is to keep greens green as we make lighter values.” An overabundance of cool, light greens can limit the pastelist’s choices.

Some artists feel overwhelmed at trying to find the correct shade of green. My experience with this problem might be instructive. Years ago I found that I had quite a collection of green pastels, perhaps three times as many sticks as any other color. But when I organized my palette I discovered that instead of having more greens I had multiples of every green made. My dissatisfaction had led me to purchase more and more, trying to find the “right” green.

Wet Sneaker Morning, 12" x 18"

The cure came when master pastelist Albert Handell, who has been so instructive to so many emerging pastelists, urged me to paint only green subject matter. He suggested I paint trees, bushes, grasses or any other subject that was solely or predominantly green. As I progressed in this experiment, bored with the same old greens, I quickly reached into the rest of my palette to add interest to the work. I soon discovered that I could use red, lavender, gold, orange, purple, magenta, blue, yellow and any other color I had on hand to enhance my greens. Using green became an adventure as I explored these many variations.

LOCAL COLOR

Like so many, I was convinced that because the local color was green I had to begin with and continue using green there. Instead, a great variety of colors under, over and next to green make it far more interesting and believable. Think, “warm in the sunlight, cool in the shade.” Sunlit greens contain somewhat more warmth, hence yellow, so begin the warm areas of green using yellow, orange, red or pink. Greens in shade are cooler, so use blue, purple or magenta.

Evening Complements (detail)

Experiment with this idea to find the combinations that please you most. To paint foliage try putting down a light, bright orange next to a dark, cool purple. Then cover both with soft strokes of medium green. Or, first put down a very light stroke of green and then go into it with touches of orange and purple to make sunlight and shadows. Try yellow and blue or red and blue-violet beneath or on top of green. You might also experiment with making your own greens by blending blue and yellow on the paper or use bold broken strokes of blue and yellow.

Be careful not to over-green areas. If you need to strengthen the colors in and around green, you might begin with a grisaille underpainting or an underdrawing done in charcoal and choose colors based on the light to dark values needed. Based on value alone you can use a great number of different colors together. Color is then predicated on the tone first, which can make for exciting color choices. This can strengthen green by adding a host of colors of the same or similar value alongside or mixed into the green.

Instead of trying to find the green that most accurately matches what you see, use another color to mimic, replace or strengthen it. In an area of shadow use the darkest blue or a very dark burgundy or purple -- and no green. In the sunlight, choose bright orange or magenta, rather than green. Force yourself to think about value before color, as well as the temperature of the color.

MAKING MUD

Won’t all those different colors make mud? Many artists theorize that the recipe for a muddy, grimy color is one part warm mixed with one part cool. However, mud is a function of temperature and value. If you mix warms and cools the result will often look muddy, but mud is most affected by the use of differing values. When you’re careful to retain analogous values in an area you can avoid dirty color. For example, look at the greens in Evening Complements. The lighter areas of foliage are made using orange, copper, gold, lavender, yellow-green and green. These warm and cool colors are of the same value, resulting in an exciting, clear warm green that isn’t muddy or gloomy. Likewise, the shadowed side of the foliage is made up of red-violet, cool purple, blue, turquoise and green. Again, the similarity of values allows clear color even though the temperatures are both warm and cool.

Lavender Sky (detail)

According to artist and pastel manufacturer Terry Ludwig, over-blending colors is the main culprit in making mud. “Some blending can be useful, but if you don’t keep the colors somewhat separate they become mud, and if they contain too much white it gets pasty looking too.” Using light layers or broken color can create optical blending that’s far more interesting than the single-note, ordinary colors that result from too much blending.

MAKING SPACE

In a landscape the goal is to create an impression of space and distance. As green fades into the distance the yellow component is filtered out by the atmosphere. To give your painting a sense of air, remember that the farther away they are, the cooler, bluer and paler the greens. This is true of all colors, of course, but this makes green particularly challenging because it’s made primarily of warm yellow, which appears close, and cool blue, which creates distance. Use warm yellow-greens in the foreground, and cool, blued greens for the background. Don’t allow olive green to become too blue in the distance, or blue-green to become too yellow in the foreground.

Significant humidity can increase the number of values perceived and necessitate a greater palette of greens since a wet climate is usually a green place. Sometimes this can baffle even a green connoisseur.

Ludwig, whose set of 85 greens have become foundational for many pastelists, was heard to remark while painting on location in sultry Atlanta, Ga., that he didn’t have the right green. His greens, which run the gamut from intense warm yellow-greens to the darkest cool blue-greens, enhanced with additions of cool reds, pale blues and warm yellows, were made to fill colors he felt were missing from his palette. “But there are a lot of nuances in Georgia in August,” he chuckles, noting he’s from Colorado, “and I still didn’t have enough with me.”

Certain greens characterize different areas of the country, but does that mean more artists in Vermont use Vermont Green, one of the Great American colors? “There’s some regional preference,” Strohsahl says. “Blue-greens for the northeast, yellow-greens in the southwest, although this is a generalization. There are lots of exceptions.” Vermont green is called that simply because, “I like Vermont,” explains Strohsahl. “Green sales are fairly consistent across the board. I think this is so because green occurs everywhere and not just in vegetation.”

COLOR WHEEL

No photograph can possibly represent the variety of greens you see in the world with your eye. The experience of painting on location will teach you more about green than any photograph. The human eye can see some 7,000,000 colors, a variety no film can begin to approach, so to appreciate the diversity of color it’s best to spend time observing and recording what you see in nature.

Final Touches, 12" x 9"

Our eyes have millions of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells called cones. When saturated with one color, the eye automatically supplies the complementary color as an after-image. You may have experienced the effect of staring at a green square and, upon looking away, seeing a mysterious red square floating in its place. The after-image provides the complement of the color. While you’re on location, search out the red after-image of green and record it in your painting. This is guaranteed to enliven your colors, since complements invariably heighten visual contrasts.

As you practice seeing in a very green environment you will begin to perceive all the colors of the color wheel. Look for the yellows and oranges of green in sunlight, the blues and purples of the shadowed greens, and the afterimage of red amid all of the numerous greens there.

Use warm and cool greens to add depth. Enhance green with all the colors in your palette, paying attention to how much you blend or leave the strokes visible. Layer colors together to boost the power of the greens you have on hand. Seek the ways that you can record all the beauty of green, the restful and useful color of nature.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE -- THE GREEN PROBLEM

Light From Above, 18" x 12"

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published as "It's Not Easy Being Green" )

Red is intense, yellow is cheerful, blue is peaceful, pink is romantic and green is -- a problem. Artists often express consternation over using the color green. It’s as though this one color, so predominant in the landscape, holds some mystery that artists must master. Despite its connotation as a restful, natural color, it can be tricky to use.

Green is found at the very center of the visible spectrum and is the hue to which our eyes are most responsive. We’re able to distinguish more shades of green than any other color, therefore, people have an intuitive, experiential understanding of green, whether consciously or not. This innate awareness can make using accurate and interesting greens a challenge. The most naïve observer can easily spot the wrong green used in a painting. Often the artist knows something is off, but has trouble finding the correction.

Santa Fe, 9" x 18"

WARM OR COOL

Residing between the primary colors yellow and blue, directly astride the cusp of warm and cool temperatures on the color wheel, green cannot easily be classified as simply warm or cool. Ask anyone to divide the color wheel in half, with warm on one side and cool on the other, and almost invariably they will draw a line placing yellow on the warm side and yellow-green on the cool. But isolate this same yellow-green and they’ll identify it as a warm color. In the surrounding colors of a painting green may function as either a warm or cool color. This variety of temperature may be part of what makes green challenging to use.

If temperature is the primary issue, why is purple -- made from warm red and cool blue -- not subject to the same complaints among artists? Perhaps part of the reason is that purple resides squarely in the cool half of the color wheel. Add to that the fact that the yellow component of green adds intensity to the mix, while the red factor in purple is related more to temperature. Intensity and temperature are separate issues. The red in purple makes a concentrated color, but not one that’s necessarily intense, while an emphasis on yellow can make green extremely intense. The intensity of yellows used to make green may sometimes make for garish, surrealistic greens. As a result, some artists charge pastel manufacturers with making unnatural or brassy greens.

“So what?” responds Bob Strohsahl, maker of Great American Artworks pastels. “As long as manufacturers are making a full line of reliably standard greens in addition to the ‘garish’ ones, ‘unnatural’ greens might be useful to some artists.” However, he notes that when making pastels, green pigments tend to drift toward blue as they lighten. “The trick is to keep greens green as we make lighter values.” An overabundance of cool, light greens can limit the pastelist’s choices.

Some artists feel overwhelmed at trying to find the correct shade of green. My experience with this problem might be instructive. Years ago I found that I had quite a collection of green pastels, perhaps three times as many sticks as any other color. But when I organized my palette I discovered that instead of having more greens I had multiples of every green made. My dissatisfaction had led me to purchase more and more, trying to find the “right” green.

Wet Sneaker Morning, 12" x 18"

The cure came when master pastelist Albert Handell, who has been so instructive to so many emerging pastelists, urged me to paint only green subject matter. He suggested I paint trees, bushes, grasses or any other subject that was solely or predominantly green. As I progressed in this experiment, bored with the same old greens, I quickly reached into the rest of my palette to add interest to the work. I soon discovered that I could use red, lavender, gold, orange, purple, magenta, blue, yellow and any other color I had on hand to enhance my greens. Using green became an adventure as I explored these many variations.

LOCAL COLOR

Like so many, I was convinced that because the local color was green I had to begin with and continue using green there. Instead, a great variety of colors under, over and next to green make it far more interesting and believable. Think, “warm in the sunlight, cool in the shade.” Sunlit greens contain somewhat more warmth, hence yellow, so begin the warm areas of green using yellow, orange, red or pink. Greens in shade are cooler, so use blue, purple or magenta.

Evening Complements (detail)

Experiment with this idea to find the combinations that please you most. To paint foliage try putting down a light, bright orange next to a dark, cool purple. Then cover both with soft strokes of medium green. Or, first put down a very light stroke of green and then go into it with touches of orange and purple to make sunlight and shadows. Try yellow and blue or red and blue-violet beneath or on top of green. You might also experiment with making your own greens by blending blue and yellow on the paper or use bold broken strokes of blue and yellow.

Be careful not to over-green areas. If you need to strengthen the colors in and around green, you might begin with a grisaille underpainting or an underdrawing done in charcoal and choose colors based on the light to dark values needed. Based on value alone you can use a great number of different colors together. Color is then predicated on the tone first, which can make for exciting color choices. This can strengthen green by adding a host of colors of the same or similar value alongside or mixed into the green.

Instead of trying to find the green that most accurately matches what you see, use another color to mimic, replace or strengthen it. In an area of shadow use the darkest blue or a very dark burgundy or purple -- and no green. In the sunlight, choose bright orange or magenta, rather than green. Force yourself to think about value before color, as well as the temperature of the color.

MAKING MUD

Won’t all those different colors make mud? Many artists theorize that the recipe for a muddy, grimy color is one part warm mixed with one part cool. However, mud is a function of temperature and value. If you mix warms and cools the result will often look muddy, but mud is most affected by the use of differing values. When you’re careful to retain analogous values in an area you can avoid dirty color. For example, look at the greens in Evening Complements. The lighter areas of foliage are made using orange, copper, gold, lavender, yellow-green and green. These warm and cool colors are of the same value, resulting in an exciting, clear warm green that isn’t muddy or gloomy. Likewise, the shadowed side of the foliage is made up of red-violet, cool purple, blue, turquoise and green. Again, the similarity of values allows clear color even though the temperatures are both warm and cool.

Lavender Sky (detail)

According to artist and pastel manufacturer Terry Ludwig, over-blending colors is the main culprit in making mud. “Some blending can be useful, but if you don’t keep the colors somewhat separate they become mud, and if they contain too much white it gets pasty looking too.” Using light layers or broken color can create optical blending that’s far more interesting than the single-note, ordinary colors that result from too much blending.

MAKING SPACE

In a landscape the goal is to create an impression of space and distance. As green fades into the distance the yellow component is filtered out by the atmosphere. To give your painting a sense of air, remember that the farther away they are, the cooler, bluer and paler the greens. This is true of all colors, of course, but this makes green particularly challenging because it’s made primarily of warm yellow, which appears close, and cool blue, which creates distance. Use warm yellow-greens in the foreground, and cool, blued greens for the background. Don’t allow olive green to become too blue in the distance, or blue-green to become too yellow in the foreground.

Significant humidity can increase the number of values perceived and necessitate a greater palette of greens since a wet climate is usually a green place. Sometimes this can baffle even a green connoisseur.

Ludwig, whose set of 85 greens have become foundational for many pastelists, was heard to remark while painting on location in sultry Atlanta, Ga., that he didn’t have the right green. His greens, which run the gamut from intense warm yellow-greens to the darkest cool blue-greens, enhanced with additions of cool reds, pale blues and warm yellows, were made to fill colors he felt were missing from his palette. “But there are a lot of nuances in Georgia in August,” he chuckles, noting he’s from Colorado, “and I still didn’t have enough with me.”

Certain greens characterize different areas of the country, but does that mean more artists in Vermont use Vermont Green, one of the Great American colors? “There’s some regional preference,” Strohsahl says. “Blue-greens for the northeast, yellow-greens in the southwest, although this is a generalization. There are lots of exceptions.” Vermont green is called that simply because, “I like Vermont,” explains Strohsahl. “Green sales are fairly consistent across the board. I think this is so because green occurs everywhere and not just in vegetation.”

COLOR WHEEL

No photograph can possibly represent the variety of greens you see in the world with your eye. The experience of painting on location will teach you more about green than any photograph. The human eye can see some 7,000,000 colors, a variety no film can begin to approach, so to appreciate the diversity of color it’s best to spend time observing and recording what you see in nature.

Final Touches, 12" x 9"

Our eyes have millions of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells called cones. When saturated with one color, the eye automatically supplies the complementary color as an after-image. You may have experienced the effect of staring at a green square and, upon looking away, seeing a mysterious red square floating in its place. The after-image provides the complement of the color. While you’re on location, search out the red after-image of green and record it in your painting. This is guaranteed to enliven your colors, since complements invariably heighten visual contrasts.

As you practice seeing in a very green environment you will begin to perceive all the colors of the color wheel. Look for the yellows and oranges of green in sunlight, the blues and purples of the shadowed greens, and the afterimage of red amid all of the numerous greens there.

Use warm and cool greens to add depth. Enhance green with all the colors in your palette, paying attention to how much you blend or leave the strokes visible. Layer colors together to boost the power of the greens you have on hand. Seek the ways that you can record all the beauty of green, the restful and useful color of nature.

songs!

songs come and go.. they slide and jump in the charts.. people will be listening to a song now, and maybe not tomorrow.. but the lyrics of a song is the one that really matters.. songs stay longer in the hearts and minds of people if their lyrics have something to say.. the mark of a good song is that it changes everytime you listen to it..

CHAPTER TWENTY -- TEMPERATURE

Hot Afternoon, 9" x 12"

What does the temperature of a color do in your painting? It may be as simple as warm colors advance and cool colors recede, but perhaps there is more. What happens when you place a warm color over a cool one -- or vice versa? Does anything different happen if you place a hot color beneath or on top of a cool one?

Let’s begin with a definition of warm, cool and hot. There are three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. Two of those colors – red and yellow – are warm, and only one – blue – is cool. Where you divide the color wheel into warm or cool is usually a personal decision, yet what artist has not used warm purple or cool orange? Nonetheless, basically two-thirds of the colors on the wheel are warm.

When we describe a hot color we usually refer to temperature only to a degree. More often the word “hot” means intense, and applies to more colors than just those in the red and yellow range. Usually, however, these intense colors are warm in nature. For instance, you might have a hot orange or red, but what do you picture when I say hot green or hot blue?

If you pictured a green with dashes of red beneath it or a blue with orange peeking through, you are thinking like an artist. When we put complements together, whether on top of one another or side by side, we are using temperature to affect color.

If you place a hot color beneath one of lesser intensity, say layering a bright yellow under a pale blue, you often achieve an optical mix that results in green. Doesn’t the same thing happen if you place a pale yellow beneath a pale blue? Yes, but to a much lesser degree. The result of that combination is usually described more as a slightly bluish green.


Much of the effect is dependent on how you choose to lay down your strokes. For instance, you might decide to put down a soft layer of yellow and then cover that with another soft layer of blue. The result blends on the paper into bluish green. If you put down a thick impasto stroke of yellow and cover it with choppy strokes of blue it results in broken color that suggests green. Think of the difference in layering the sky or the grasses -- soft, smooth layers of sky versus broken strokes of grass. If you use the side of your pastel to slightly blend layers you achieve a very different look using temperature than you do if you use the end of the pastel to put in lines. Both become green but to varying degrees.

Experiment with putting down different colors. What happens?

Try hot over cool.

Cool over hot.

Warm over hot.

Hot over warm.

Warm over cool.

Cool over warm.

Cool over cool.

Warm over warm.

Hot over hot.

Next, how about using a split-complement, the color to each side of the complement, beneath or on top? How does that affect things? That’s too many color experiments to count – I'll let you make that chart.

I challenge you to simply experiment with colors and see what happens when you try different combinations. The charts you make will help you remember what you discovered. Then apply what you learn to layering colors in your paintings.

Almost Spring, 12" x 18"

CHAPTER TWENTY -- TEMPERATURE

Hot Afternoon, 9" x 12"

What does the temperature of a color do in your painting? It may be as simple as warm colors advance and cool colors recede, but perhaps there is more. What happens when you place a warm color over a cool one -- or vice versa? Does anything different happen if you place a hot color beneath or on top of a cool one?

Let’s begin with a definition of warm, cool and hot. There are three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. Two of those colors – red and yellow – are warm, and only one – blue – is cool. Where you divide the color wheel into warm or cool is usually a personal decision, yet what artist has not used warm purple or cool orange? Nonetheless, basically two-thirds of the colors on the wheel are warm.

When we describe a hot color we usually refer to temperature only to a degree. More often the word “hot” means intense, and applies to more colors than just those in the red and yellow range. Usually, however, these intense colors are warm in nature. For instance, you might have a hot orange or red, but what do you picture when I say hot green or hot blue?

If you pictured a green with dashes of red beneath it or a blue with orange peeking through, you are thinking like an artist. When we put complements together, whether on top of one another or side by side, we are using temperature to affect color.

If you place a hot color beneath one of lesser intensity, say layering a bright yellow under a pale blue, you often achieve an optical mix that results in green. Doesn’t the same thing happen if you place a pale yellow beneath a pale blue? Yes, but to a much lesser degree. The result of that combination is usually described more as a slightly bluish green.


Much of the effect is dependent on how you choose to lay down your strokes. For instance, you might decide to put down a soft layer of yellow and then cover that with another soft layer of blue. The result blends on the paper into bluish green. If you put down a thick impasto stroke of yellow and cover it with choppy strokes of blue it results in broken color that suggests green. Think of the difference in layering the sky or the grasses -- soft, smooth layers of sky versus broken strokes of grass. If you use the side of your pastel to slightly blend layers you achieve a very different look using temperature than you do if you use the end of the pastel to put in lines. Both become green but to varying degrees.

Experiment with putting down different colors. What happens?

Try hot over cool.

Cool over hot.

Warm over hot.

Hot over warm.

Warm over cool.

Cool over warm.

Cool over cool.

Warm over warm.

Hot over hot.

Next, how about using a split-complement, the color to each side of the complement, beneath or on top? How does that affect things? That’s too many color experiments to count – I'll let you make that chart.

I challenge you to simply experiment with colors and see what happens when you try different combinations. The charts you make will help you remember what you discovered. Then apply what you learn to layering colors in your paintings.

Almost Spring, 12" x 18"

CHAPTER NINETEEN -- COLOR THEORY

Hillside Progression 2, 11" x 23"

Color is the lifeblood of a painting. It’s the energy and animation, the element that inspires the heart and touches the core of the viewer. It’s extremely personal and yet has universal overtones. It has been codified and studied, yet always seems to escape definitions that restrict its use. Out of the frustration of creating muddy color in pastels, as well as successful attempts to use compelling color, arises the greatest growth. In the hands of the master pastelist color can have more depth and excitement than any other medium.

The rules of color use must be respected and understood so that they may be skillfully utilized or more skillfully broken. As youngsters we came to know that yellow and blue make green, whether we learned it from a gentle teacher or from a television jingle. Yet teaching children further basics of color use are often neglected, left to the realm of play alone. The art student often comes to color in her studies last, after studying composition, drawing and value, which are somewhat more easily taught. Color seems more mysterious, a bit perplexing and hard to explain.

There comes a time in each artist’s career when she must question green and define it as both yellow and blue -- and perhaps think of green in terms of red (its complement) or orange and violet (its split complements.) That’s when color becomes personal, intuitive and truly useful to the artist. It’s also the time when questions come, doubts rage and real learning begins.

Glow, 12" x 18"

The student approaches the master to ask how to make color succeed, how to use it to freshen the expression of a painting, to escape the dreaded dulls of personal habit. “I want to loosen up the way I use color,” she declares. She’s read the books and considered theories in the abstract. She knows the color wheel and has become apprenticed to the master in her head. Yet nothing replaces the pastel-beneath-the-fingernails work. The master says, “You want to learn about color? Use it! Paint, paint, paint!” These questions cannot be answered by theories or rules, only by experience.

So what questions are best? What might the student do to learn from her work? Each journey is individual, with its own moments of growth and personal dissatisfactions. Questions often beget more questions, yet good questions finally result in some answers. We must share the answers, which no doubt will show in the master’s final body of work. Even more valuable might be sharing the questions, which is the ultimate role of the teacher.

California Skyline, 12" x 18"

General color theory holds that cool colors recede while warm colors advance, complements laid down side by side excite the eye, dark colors have more weight than light colors and intense colors should be used to accent not inundate. There’s no denying that color is relational, that it works in association with surrounding colors. These have becomes rules because they commonly hold true. But may they be abused and broken, and thereby made to work for different reasons, to other ends? Why might I not flood the paper with the most brilliant color imaginable to achieve a somber mood? Is it possible? How can I know if I only accept traditional wisdom?

Color and value are inextricably linked. Years of traditional thought hold that one should structure a painting from a drawing and value standpoint before adding color. Begin with a great rendering, sort out the values and stay true to those decisions, laying down accurately matched colors over your chosen values, and you will have a successful color painting when done. Argue with this and you can spend hours at any pastel convention deep in philosophy over lunch. Argue it on paper instead and see where you end up.

Try structuring the painting solely on color first -- no drawing at all, nothing on that paper but the gaping, empty surface. Begin with the most neglected and unused pastel of any color in your palette. Do you neglect magenta? Put down a definitive swath of it across the paper. How about that brilliant yellow-green, the one you’ve only used one time to touch the tips of sunlit leaves in the final dabs on the summer trees? What happens where a splotch of it touches the magenta? Does it make your heart race or add a hint of moisture along your upper lip? Go there anyway. Now find another exciting color, one that’s dangerous in combination with these two, the last one you would choose. It doesn’t matter if the reason you avoid it is because in the past you’ve learned it makes mud. Mud can be beautiful -- and fun to play with, especially when you aren’t worrying about the result.

Day's Angry End, 9" x 12"

Rather than abandoning yourself to the anxiety of some self-imposed goal, let color become the goal. Do you love the rich, deep-dark hues of reddish purple or the lyrical strains of lavender and orange as they link? Put them down on your paper. Respond spontaneously to your color choices without asking or analyzing.

Perhaps the best advice is to stop painting somewhat sooner. Instead of abandoning yourself to the experiment and putting all the color onto one soon-beleaguered page, hold back, experiment and breathe a little between each rush of excitement or fear. Take time to think and formulate the next questions. Make many such experiments. Do a hundred of them! Allow time and experience to become the teachers and your new questions to determine the next try.

Then just go paint.

Hot Summer Night, 12" x 18"

Mesa Encantada, 9" x 12"

CHAPTER NINETEEN -- COLOR THEORY

Hillside Progression 2, 11" x 23"

Color is the lifeblood of a painting. It’s the energy and animation, the element that inspires the heart and touches the core of the viewer. It’s extremely personal and yet has universal overtones. It has been codified and studied, yet always seems to escape definitions that restrict its use. Out of the frustration of creating muddy color in pastels, as well as successful attempts to use compelling color, arises the greatest growth. In the hands of the master pastelist color can have more depth and excitement than any other medium.

The rules of color use must be respected and understood so that they may be skillfully utilized or more skillfully broken. As youngsters we came to know that yellow and blue make green, whether we learned it from a gentle teacher or from a television jingle. Yet teaching children further basics of color use are often neglected, left to the realm of play alone. The art student often comes to color in her studies last, after studying composition, drawing and value, which are somewhat more easily taught. Color seems more mysterious, a bit perplexing and hard to explain.

There comes a time in each artist’s career when she must question green and define it as both yellow and blue -- and perhaps think of green in terms of red (its complement) or orange and violet (its split complements.) That’s when color becomes personal, intuitive and truly useful to the artist. It’s also the time when questions come, doubts rage and real learning begins.

Glow, 12" x 18"

The student approaches the master to ask how to make color succeed, how to use it to freshen the expression of a painting, to escape the dreaded dulls of personal habit. “I want to loosen up the way I use color,” she declares. She’s read the books and considered theories in the abstract. She knows the color wheel and has become apprenticed to the master in her head. Yet nothing replaces the pastel-beneath-the-fingernails work. The master says, “You want to learn about color? Use it! Paint, paint, paint!” These questions cannot be answered by theories or rules, only by experience.

So what questions are best? What might the student do to learn from her work? Each journey is individual, with its own moments of growth and personal dissatisfactions. Questions often beget more questions, yet good questions finally result in some answers. We must share the answers, which no doubt will show in the master’s final body of work. Even more valuable might be sharing the questions, which is the ultimate role of the teacher.

California Skyline, 12" x 18"

General color theory holds that cool colors recede while warm colors advance, complements laid down side by side excite the eye, dark colors have more weight than light colors and intense colors should be used to accent not inundate. There’s no denying that color is relational, that it works in association with surrounding colors. These have becomes rules because they commonly hold true. But may they be abused and broken, and thereby made to work for different reasons, to other ends? Why might I not flood the paper with the most brilliant color imaginable to achieve a somber mood? Is it possible? How can I know if I only accept traditional wisdom?

Color and value are inextricably linked. Years of traditional thought hold that one should structure a painting from a drawing and value standpoint before adding color. Begin with a great rendering, sort out the values and stay true to those decisions, laying down accurately matched colors over your chosen values, and you will have a successful color painting when done. Argue with this and you can spend hours at any pastel convention deep in philosophy over lunch. Argue it on paper instead and see where you end up.

Try structuring the painting solely on color first -- no drawing at all, nothing on that paper but the gaping, empty surface. Begin with the most neglected and unused pastel of any color in your palette. Do you neglect magenta? Put down a definitive swath of it across the paper. How about that brilliant yellow-green, the one you’ve only used one time to touch the tips of sunlit leaves in the final dabs on the summer trees? What happens where a splotch of it touches the magenta? Does it make your heart race or add a hint of moisture along your upper lip? Go there anyway. Now find another exciting color, one that’s dangerous in combination with these two, the last one you would choose. It doesn’t matter if the reason you avoid it is because in the past you’ve learned it makes mud. Mud can be beautiful -- and fun to play with, especially when you aren’t worrying about the result.

Day's Angry End, 9" x 12"

Rather than abandoning yourself to the anxiety of some self-imposed goal, let color become the goal. Do you love the rich, deep-dark hues of reddish purple or the lyrical strains of lavender and orange as they link? Put them down on your paper. Respond spontaneously to your color choices without asking or analyzing.

Perhaps the best advice is to stop painting somewhat sooner. Instead of abandoning yourself to the experiment and putting all the color onto one soon-beleaguered page, hold back, experiment and breathe a little between each rush of excitement or fear. Take time to think and formulate the next questions. Make many such experiments. Do a hundred of them! Allow time and experience to become the teachers and your new questions to determine the next try.

Then just go paint.

Hot Summer Night, 12" x 18"

Mesa Encantada, 9" x 12"