Coming from a watercolour and gouache background the biggest difficulty I have had with oil paints is paint handling. With watercolour and gouache I was always able to successfully adjust the chroma with the complimentary colour. In fact the biggest problem with those mediums is not enough chroma. Not so with oil paints, I have discovered, where the amount of chroma seems to be almost overwhelming. My old methods have been particularly unsuccessful with cool skin tones, where I never seem to quite "hit the note". For some reason I have never considered using black to adjust the chroma, although from your demonstration it is clear how well it works. It also obvious that there is a lot of black pigment in the skin tones of many portraits. I'm not sure if this is something that I picked up many years ago at art school, or if it is a product of my years as an illustrator using water based mediums, but black has always seemed to be the one pigment to avoid. The obvious answer is, use black! But I would be interested to know if you have any other suggestions. For example, would you create a grey with black and white to reduce the chroma of a tonally mid range colour? I have been making my own blacks, e.g. Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. Is this a bad idea? Thank you for such a wonderful channel.
Per your last two points, there was a time when i did just that but found more unity in making greys out of the same r/y/b I use for everything else. (Plus seeing the amount of color in the greys of such painters as Sorolla) Prefer to think of every value as a color-value and ask every neutral to take a side..r/y/b, including the darkest darks. And they do. I honestly don't know if using that black is a bad idea except for the fact that the Burnt Sienna would tend to lighten the black you have made versus ivory, say.
Thank you Mr Ingbretson, your demonstration and explanation is most helpful. I've been diving into the complexities of color mixing. This is the first I've seen quite like this, it makes sense! 🌷
I always struggle to see what hue shadows are or lean towards in foliage - trees, bushes, hedges etc. Or seeing the colour/hue of shadows in anything generally. It's like it's a secret/mystery as to their hue/colour. Are there any rules? or ways to help see the colour of shadow/things in darkness? so that I can get a likeness and not make mistakes. I will search the videos on this site, but if anyone has any suggested videos to watch here or else where, please reply. Thanks
This was eye opening. You always seem to throw pearls of wisdom in that seemly come out of nowhere. No color instruction I’ve ever come across made some of these points. Thank you Paul! In line with some of the other comments I see here, a couple examples of mixing neutrals and adjusting values with black vs color would be incredibly helpful.
@@PaulIngbretson whereas I’ve been able to readily apply your process as it relates to hitting values, shapes, points and angles through lots of relational looking practice, I find hitting color notes much much harder to achieve because I don’t always know what combinations from your 5 color primary palette to the note I’m seeing. I find this especially difficult with subtle shifts in the more neutral colors. For instance, if I was trying to recreate a yellow ochre type color with your 5 color palette, I’m somewhat shooting in the dark to get a solid starting point, but with enough trial and error sure enough sometime makes it onto the canvas. But then I see a color shift I want to try to capture, but I find attempts at subtly adjusting with the full strength pigments often sends me wildly in the wrong direction. I suspect if you were to show a quick demonstration of how you work from your palette towards more traditional earth tone/neutrals and then how you use your primaries to subtly adjust it towards a note, you might drop pearls of helpful color wisdom along the way. In the same arena, when to use black, white, and colors in this subtle adjustment context is also something that I would love your views on. Trial and error might be the only medicine, but some of your tips in this video about matching the chromas and values first, and a couple passing comments about when you would use one pigment into another brought this question to mind! Thanks as always, Paul!
Chroma for me is the most illusive of the three color dimensions. What I found helpful is the “Munsell Student Color Book”. This consists of various exercises in which you arrange color chips in value and chroma order. When you are done you have a reference book showing the three dimensional color “space”, and hopefully a better eye for seeing the differences. The book is a little pricy, (about $75 as I recall) but it will give you hours of useful amusement. As a “cheat” for comparing values you can always use your smart phone, take a picture and switch to black and white. If two spots look the same in the picture they are the same value. If they look different to your naked eye then the difference must be in chroma and /or hue. Thank you Paul for another greta video.
Looking comparatively eventually educates the eye, and I don't disagree with the benefit of eliminating the 'color' to see the value and presumably your phone would be a help but I am betting that after a while you will 'get it' and be able to do it without the helper feedback.
Once an older friend of mine said: “Teachers teach what is written; they don’t have rich experience by themselves. Masters demonstrate. They are masters by their own experiences. They show the student that to be a master is possible, because between them there’s not much difference, they both are humans. But remember, a master accepts everyone, but they know who are the true student’s.” Do you aggre, that a real teacher/master should show how it is done?
Yes, lead by example, demonstration as well as conversation. My sense as a teacher was that all I could teach was what I could do. Don't just quote aphorisms or utter phrases unless you know and employ them through your working experience.
There really is a very simple way to become "sensitive" to the dynamics of hue, value, and chroma...Munsell. The Munsell books present the various hues as value and chroma vary. If you are a serious student, there is no time to waste here. Save the money, own the book, don't look back. Personally, over the past 3yrs, I have made the journey from stressful ignorance to confident knowledge in this regard.
@@theodoradanielacapat298 You will be looking for the Munsell Book of Color Glossy Edition...approximately $1000 USD. For an example of how one artist uses Munsell, look up Kathleen Speranza.
Just trying to show how the color itself could vary in intensity. All color is relatively intense against neutrals. But maybe I miss your point, Brian?
Immensely informative, thank you for the demo. (about when you said that you prefer oils over turps): do you clean your brushes with oils during a painting session?
Yes, but usually just rag off the excess. In the case of needing an unadulterated light yellow, say, I simply grab a fresh brush. Also I do start by hitting the lights typically like a water-colorist and then maintain the lightest brush for that purpose. Still, I find myself usually using 3 - 5 brushes at most in a session so some cleaning with oils happens. Don't count me as too much of a purist regarding turps for that use either. I just make sure it's all ragged off before using the brush.
@@PaulIngbretson Thank you, I will try that out, because when I clean with turps, it stays in the brush and ruins the paint consistency almost every time.
I'm confused, isn't the most intensity when no white has been added? The moment you add any white to the top colors on that palette it immediately begins to lose intensity?
Thanks for a very informative demo/video. It got me wondering what you thoughts might be concerning the use of black out doors. I once heard that Sargent said black was the prince of color’s and that he couldn’t paint a landscape without it on his pallet. I don’t know if that is true but some of his early landscapes (pre Monet?) do seem to have black in them.
I thought I responded to this before but just in case it would be remiss not to have people note that his early effects of light and his general truth are primarily tonal. Look at that girl at Capril standing by a wall and the Hibbard of the (perhaps) same wall and you will pick up the difference. Of course, as you say, it does show in his later work, too.
Don't disagree, Violet (a really strong one) would be good and I used one of old but found myself rarely resorting to it...so. Outdoors its use could easily play a fairly direct role.
I see that I didn't address the question of warm and cool. I do consider it, notice it, in comparing notes especially when looking at the set of the darks, say, or the blues because it helps with categorizing the relationships. I also point out to students the relative warmness of the shadows in most indoors settings much as DaVinci pointed out the coolness in them outdoors. I don't formularize it into a process as some do, just have it built into the world of relationships for use and reflection like anatomical or perspective knowledge.
@@PaulIngbretson science is only at the service of art, never an aesthetic decision is based on formulas... it is why painting is an art form... same principles different painters . Warm and cool should be also a dimension of color ,the fourth and final consideration and most important... to make a painting work
Professor : after watching so many videos of yours I haven't seen any videos on Joaquin Sorolla Now I wonder what is your opinion and the Boston School's opinion on the style of Joaquin Sorolla
I know it's not literally one of the 3 aspects used to define color but temperature is what I think about right after tone when I want to capture a sense of light. When you consider a color's hue, is that when you're thinking about the temperature of the color?
I don't think about the actual temperature of a color just the apparent relative warmness which has its identity via other notes. I do think about whether the setup (still-life e.g.) is overall warm or cool but even that I do by simply comparing it with the body of paintings at large or by looking around the room at different settings (by isolating with a viewfinder. for comparison. However, it is clear that the warm/cool interplay is also a factor light effects. If you hit notes well in relation to each other you will have that, too.
I could have said, 'yes.' Somehow went into the larger discussion. Lol as they say. But the rest is involved, too. What got you started on the warm/cool thing so early in the note hitting? Was that something you read somewhere?
The more opaque a pigment is, the more intense it is straight out of the tube. The more transparent, the more white you need to add to reveal the intensity.
Wonderful to see a demonstration, really informative, thank you!
Glad to find this video, with the question from Jeff and the explanation from you 👍 👏
hope it was useful
@@PaulIngbretson sure, I took this and transfered it to autobody paint alot of good points to follow
Coming from a watercolour and gouache background the biggest difficulty I have had with oil paints is paint handling. With watercolour and gouache I was always able to successfully adjust the chroma with the complimentary colour. In fact the biggest problem with those mediums is not enough chroma. Not so with oil paints, I have discovered, where the amount of chroma seems to be almost overwhelming. My old methods have been particularly unsuccessful with cool skin tones, where I never seem to quite "hit the note". For some reason I have never considered using black to adjust the chroma, although from your demonstration it is clear how well it works. It also obvious that there is a lot of black pigment in the skin tones of many portraits. I'm not sure if this is something that I picked up many years ago at art school, or if it is a product of my years as an illustrator using water based mediums, but black has always seemed to be the one pigment to avoid. The obvious answer is, use black! But I would be interested to know if you have any other suggestions. For example, would you create a grey with black and white to reduce the chroma of a tonally mid range colour? I have been making my own blacks, e.g. Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. Is this a bad idea?
Thank you for such a wonderful channel.
Per your last two points, there was a time when i did just that but found more unity in making greys out of the same r/y/b I use for everything else. (Plus seeing the amount of color in the greys of such painters as Sorolla) Prefer to think of every value as a color-value and ask every neutral to take a side..r/y/b, including the darkest darks. And they do. I honestly don't know if using that black is a bad idea except for the fact that the Burnt Sienna would tend to lighten the black you have made versus ivory, say.
Thank you Mr Ingbretson, your demonstration and explanation is most helpful. I've been diving into the complexities of color mixing. This is the first I've seen quite like this, it makes sense! 🌷
Glad it was helpful, Marie!
I always struggle to see what hue shadows are or lean towards in foliage - trees, bushes, hedges etc. Or seeing the colour/hue of shadows in anything generally. It's like it's a secret/mystery as to their hue/colour. Are there any rules? or ways to help see the colour of shadow/things in darkness? so that I can get a likeness and not make mistakes. I will search the videos on this site, but if anyone has any suggested videos to watch here or else where, please reply. Thanks
This was eye opening. You always seem to throw pearls of wisdom in that seemly come out of nowhere. No color instruction I’ve ever come across made some of these points. Thank you Paul! In line with some of the other comments I see here, a couple examples of mixing neutrals and adjusting values with black vs color would be incredibly helpful.
Might you expand on that a bit, John. Will consider it.
@@PaulIngbretson whereas I’ve been able to readily apply your process as it relates to hitting values, shapes, points and angles through lots of relational looking practice, I find hitting color notes much much harder to achieve because I don’t always know what combinations from your 5 color primary palette to the note I’m seeing. I find this especially difficult with subtle shifts in the more neutral colors. For instance, if I was trying to recreate a yellow ochre type color with your 5 color palette, I’m somewhat shooting in the dark to get a solid starting point, but with enough trial and error sure enough sometime makes it onto the canvas. But then I see a color shift I want to try to capture, but I find attempts at subtly adjusting with the full strength pigments often sends me wildly in the wrong direction. I suspect if you were to show a quick demonstration of how you work from your palette towards more traditional earth tone/neutrals and then how you use your primaries to subtly adjust it towards a note, you might drop pearls of helpful color wisdom along the way. In the same arena, when to use black, white, and colors in this subtle adjustment context is also something that I would love your views on. Trial and error might be the only medicine, but some of your tips in this video about matching the chromas and values first, and a couple passing comments about when you would use one pigment into another brought this question to mind! Thanks as always, Paul!
Chroma for me is the most illusive of the three color dimensions. What I found helpful is the “Munsell Student Color Book”. This consists of various exercises in which you arrange color chips in value and chroma order. When you are done you have a reference book showing the three dimensional color “space”, and hopefully a better eye for seeing the differences. The book is a little pricy, (about $75 as I recall) but it will give you hours of useful amusement.
As a “cheat” for comparing values you can always use your smart phone, take a picture and switch to black and white. If two spots look the same in the picture they are the same value. If they look different to your naked eye then the difference must be in chroma and /or hue.
Thank you Paul for another greta video.
Looking it up and there's many editions. Which one do you recommend?
Looking comparatively eventually educates the eye, and I don't disagree with the benefit of eliminating the 'color' to see the value and presumably your phone would be a help but I am betting that after a while you will 'get it' and be able to do it without the helper feedback.
Chroma pertains to purity of a hue. The lesser the blackness @ fixed value, the higher the chroma.
Hi paul
Sheila from England
Thanks for another way to see and use colour intensity .
More this to this and that to that (ha ha)
Thanks Sheila
Once an older friend of mine said: “Teachers teach what is written; they don’t have rich experience by themselves. Masters demonstrate. They are masters by their own experiences. They show the student that to be a master is possible, because between them there’s not much difference, they both are humans. But remember, a master accepts everyone, but they know who are the true student’s.” Do you aggre, that a real teacher/master should show how it is done?
Yes, lead by example, demonstration as well as conversation. My sense as a teacher was that all I could teach was what I could do. Don't just quote aphorisms or utter phrases unless you know and employ them through your working experience.
There really is a very simple way to become "sensitive" to the dynamics of hue, value, and chroma...Munsell. The Munsell books present the various hues as value and chroma vary. If you are a serious student, there is no time to waste here. Save the money, own the book, don't look back. Personally, over the past 3yrs, I have made the journey from stressful ignorance to confident knowledge in this regard.
Which book is it :) I would love to purchase it
@@theodoradanielacapat298 You will be looking for the Munsell Book of Color Glossy Edition...approximately $1000 USD. For an example of how one artist uses Munsell, look up Kathleen Speranza.
Agree about the value of Munsell knowledge
Why not illustrate intense coma against neutralized gray?
Just trying to show how the color itself could vary in intensity. All color is relatively intense against neutrals. But maybe I miss your point, Brian?
Immensely informative, thank you for the demo. (about when you said that you prefer oils over turps): do you clean your brushes with oils during a painting session?
Yes, but usually just rag off the excess. In the case of needing an unadulterated light yellow, say, I simply grab a fresh brush. Also I do start by hitting the lights typically like a water-colorist and then maintain the lightest brush for that purpose. Still, I find myself usually using 3 - 5 brushes at most in a session so some cleaning with oils happens. Don't count me as too much of a purist regarding turps for that use either. I just make sure it's all ragged off before using the brush.
@@PaulIngbretson Thank you, I will try that out, because when I clean with turps, it stays in the brush and ruins the paint consistency almost every time.
I'm confused, isn't the most intensity when no white has been added? The moment you add any white to the top colors on that palette it immediately begins to lose intensity?
Thanks for a very informative demo/video. It got me wondering what you thoughts might be concerning the use of black out doors. I once heard that Sargent said black was the prince of color’s and that he couldn’t paint a landscape without it on his pallet. I don’t know if that is true but some of his early landscapes (pre Monet?) do seem to have black in them.
I thought I responded to this before but just in case it would be remiss not to have people note that his early effects of light and his general truth are primarily tonal. Look at that girl at Capril standing by a wall and the Hibbard of the (perhaps) same wall and you will pick up the difference. Of course, as you say, it does show in his later work, too.
As an impressionist wouldn’t you also consider warm and cool within a hue? and why not use violet to have the three pair of complements ?
Don't disagree, Violet (a really strong one) would be good and I used one of old but found myself rarely resorting to it...so. Outdoors its use could easily play a fairly direct role.
I see that I didn't address the question of warm and cool. I do consider it, notice it, in comparing notes especially when looking at the set of the darks, say, or the blues because it helps with categorizing the relationships. I also point out to students the relative warmness of the shadows in most indoors settings much as DaVinci pointed out the coolness in them outdoors. I don't formularize it into a process as some do, just have it built into the world of relationships for use and reflection like anatomical or perspective knowledge.
@@PaulIngbretson science is only at the service of art, never an aesthetic decision is based on formulas... it is why painting is an art form... same principles different painters . Warm and cool should be also a dimension of color ,the fourth and final consideration and most important... to make a painting work
Professor : after watching so many videos of yours I haven't seen any videos on Joaquin Sorolla
Now I wonder what is your opinion and the Boston School's opinion on the style of Joaquin Sorolla
You among a number of others. On my list.
@@PaulIngbretson well hopefully soon 🤓🖤
I know it's not literally one of the 3 aspects used to define color but temperature is what I think about right after tone when I want to capture a sense of light. When you consider a color's hue, is that when you're thinking about the temperature of the color?
I don't think about the actual temperature of a color just the apparent relative warmness which has its identity via other notes. I do think about whether the setup (still-life e.g.) is overall warm or cool but even that I do by simply comparing it with the body of paintings at large or by looking around the room at different settings (by isolating with a viewfinder. for comparison. However, it is clear that the warm/cool interplay is also a factor light effects. If you hit notes well in relation to each other you will have that, too.
I could have said, 'yes.' Somehow went into the larger discussion. Lol as they say. But the rest is involved, too.
What got you started on the warm/cool thing so early in the note hitting? Was that something you read somewhere?
The video I wanted
Is it accurate that chroma produces more luminosity in your paintings along with value creating light?
You will find your 'glow' will increase with both contrast and chroma...plus edge sharpness of course.
@@PaulIngbretson What do you mean by edge sharpness?
@@PaulIngbretson And I do strive for that glow that’s what inspires me to paint , it seems like it’s so hard to achieve though....
@@PaulIngbretson Then you for responding Paul your videos are very helpful by the way.
@@PaulIngbretson I watched your video number 225 , and I understand What you mean about Edge sharpness .
The more opaque a pigment is, the more intense it is straight out of the tube. The more transparent, the more white you need to add to reveal the intensity.
Massa!
lol
Hope you're not going to get paid... but, well done.
Haha!