Birches and their Neighbors - Day 31

Janus in the Birches  

Looking Ahead and Looking Behind    

- Much can be observed by looking backwards at a sunrise     

Janus, the Roman god of transitions, and especially the god of the New Year, is depicted as a two-headed figure who is able to look in two directions: to where we have come from - the past - and also to where we are going - the future. Janus is able to act appropriately in the present - now - because of being able to see both ahead and behind.
Similarly, I think, while I can get lovely sunrise photos by shooting in the direction of the sun, sometimes I can make even more telling photographs by observing the effects of that sunrise on my surroundings. These effects include capturing opposites like complementary colors in shadows, and revealing objects not in the image by the absence of the light they are blocking, and by enjoying the overall glow of the atmosphere.

And so with the New Year. Here's to Janus in the Birches, looking backwards at 2013, and looking forward to 2014. Best wishes from here for a Happy New Year!

Birches and their Neighbors - Day 26

Sunrise Contrasting Colors

WHAAA'  ???  Here's the photo as an optimized .jpg.  Changes that happened after importing to Blogger included pixelization and color shifts.

Here's the same photo saved as a .png-8. It's almost identical to original. Blogger, what happened? 

Lights at Sunrise 

- and the colors they produce 

There are two light sources in this photo - one, the rising sun bouncing through the clouds in the eastern sky, and the other, the artificial light on the building behind the trees.
To our eyes, the areas where the light does not strike show up as complementary colors to the light - in this case intense blue-violet against intense orange-yellow.
The artificial light merely serves as an accent to the colors the sun produces.

Birches and their Neighbors - Day 16

Moon and Birches

Almost-Full-Moon-Rise Through Winter Birches  

- with a diffuse glow of color through clouds 

Watching the moon rise majestically and slowly above the horizon is such a relaxing thing to do.
In the summer, these birches are in full leaf and they block the lower sky. It's only through the bare branches of these trees in the winter that the moon can be seen at such a low angle.
And the light, yes, it is bright enough to read by.

Art Every Day Month - Nov 22 -

Break of Dawn

Break of Dawn  - light emerging from darkness

Source photo

It's not so much getting up early that makes photography at dawn an adventure. The real thrill comes from watching as hidden hills and trees emerge from the background, when the strangeness of a darkened location becomes familiar again as day takes over from night.
Changes in the early morning landscape are intensified by changes in color, like this morning's sunrise with yellow-orange shafts of light cutting through a break in a cloud-bank into violet-blue shadows. And then, just as quickly, the sun went behind the clouds, and the quality of the light changed again.

Art Every Day Month - Nov 4 -

Sun on the River

Sun on the River - complementary colors in the landscape

Source photo

Most modern cameras have computerized systems which measure light conditions and then adjust the camera's settings to take acceptable photographs under normal conditions. However, these systems can be thwarted by breaking the rules, and a photographer can get really interesting images as a result.
Here, I shot directly into the reflection of the sun on the water (usually a no-no), and the camera tried to compensate by exposing for the bright patches, thus underexposing the surrounding areas. And what lovely contrasting colors of purply-blues and yellow-oranges appeared. It's a bit of a gamble, breaking the rules, but those gorgeous indigo hills were worth it!

Art Every Day Month - Post 11

Complementary Colors

Leaves on the Forest Floor - Detail of 11" x 15" Watercolor on paper -
Study of chromatic neutrals from complementary colors




Source photo

 Walking along the trail on an overcast day, I was not so much scuffing my feet in the leaves as simply looking at them. I was impressed with how brilliant the browns and oranges and the occasional yellows were - and how, well, unsaturated, or unnaturally de-saturated, the colours of the other leaves were.

It looked like I was walking through one of these special effects settings on a digital camera, you know the one where you neutralize all the other colors except the one you are interested in showing.

The two complementary colours I used in this painting are orange and ultramarine blue, and their various chromatic neutrals range through ochre tones to khakis and dark dull grays. I layered several coats of watercolor paint, which allowed the pigments to pool and dry on top of each other, and which enhanced some already interesting wet-in-wet effects.

Art Every Day Month - Post 10

Brushstrokes

Brushstrokes - Detail of 11" x 15" Watercolor on Paper -
Study in Making Marks with a Brush

This painting is a study in brushstrokes and making marks, and also in complementary colors -  the yellow-greens and red-violets in various intensities give a sense of depth and shallow distance in the image.

I started the drawing by setting the direction I wanted the marks to flow in and then I followed these faint lines, repeating brushstroke gestures as I went.

Art Every Day Month - November 5

Crossed Branches

Tangled Criss-Crossed Branches  - Detail of 11" x 15" Watercolor on paper -
Examination of layers in foreground and background



Source Photo


Cameras focus in different ways than the human eye does. We are fortunate that our eyes can adjust quickly and see whatever details that we want to concentrate on.

A camera just wants to take a picture. The camera sets its focus at a particular distance in the scene, and depending on other settings, the rest of that picture may or may not be in focus.

Sometimes the scene we are looking at is confusing, and our brain uses certain cues to figure out what the eyes are looking at. One of these cues to depth perception is perceiving overlap - what is in front and what is behind.

In this photo of tangled branches, the focal point was supposed to be the raindrop on the branch. (See it?) The camera actually focused on the nearest object, the left-hand side of the red osier dogwood branch, and put the rest of the trees in the scene gradually out of focus the farther away they were. The overlap effect is intensified because of the difference in focus. Meanwhile, the camera flash made the different colors in the branches show up brightly, and that turned the tangle of branches into an interesting geometric pattern of shapes and colors.

Art Every Day Month - November 4

Types of Separation

Separation - Tree Stump - Detail of 11" x 15" Watercolor on paper -
Examination of types of separation in wood

Source photo

Walking through the woods, I was intrigued by the various ways that whole objects can become separated. There's sawing, there's peeling, there's cutting, breaking, twisting, tearing, splitting, and cleaving. In this tree stump, you can pretty well see all of these. Each of these processes leaves a particular mark or texture, the signature of what has taken place. It's up to the observant person to notice what has happened.
 

The Color Wheel

The Color Wheel
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Colored pencil on paper 7.5" x 7.5"
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Studying color relationships has been part of an artist's education for centuries, and the color wheel is a visual aid for exploring and organizing the use of colors.

A color wheel takes the spectrum of hues, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, in the order that they appear in when white light is split by a prism, and wraps them around into a circle. Seeing color relationships becomes easy using this chart.

Complementary color pairs (red/green, blue/orange, yellow/violet) appear on opposite sides of the color wheel. The intervals of triads of colors, such as primary colors (red, yellow, blue) or secondary colors (orange, green, violet), create triangles within the color wheel. And using a color wheel, an artist can easily identify analogous colors which sit next to each other, or warm and cool colors which fall on one side or the other of the color wheel.

Using color relationships in a painting or a drawing lets an artist select colors that will best communicate the intended meaning of the artwork, and the color wheel is an efficient visual aid for identifying those relationships.
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Complementary Blends 3 - Yellow and Violet

Complementary Blends 3 - Yellow and Violet

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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When colors are chosen and organized in particular ways, they can give a three-dimensional sense to a picture. Colors that are complementary to their background tend to "pop out" or to occupy a space in front of the background.

Yellow is a high-value warm color and at its most saturated, it appears to "advance" or be closer to the viewer. Violet is a cool color and at low intensity it tends to "recede." In this drawing, the triangle of bright yellow appears to be floating in front of its background. The background of the various greyish-browns resulting from mixing the single spectrum-yellow and spectrum-violet seems to fall back behind that central rectangle.

Knowing how colors behave in combination with other colors is vital when an artist wants to emphasize an area of an image, or wants to develop a composition that leads the viewer's eye through the picture.

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Complementary Blends 2 - Blue and Orange

Complementary Blends 2 - Blue and Orange

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Hue, saturation and value are different ways of looking at colors. With complementary pairs, there are only two hues, just two colors, in this case orange and blue.
Saturation, or color intensity, is a way of noticing how brilliant or dull a color looks. As complementary color blends approach a neutral tone, they become lower and lower in intensity.
Value is a way of describing how light or dark a color appears.

The two hues in this drawing are blue and orange. I used a single blue pencil as close in pigment to a spectrum blue as I could find in my 120-pencil universe, and a single orange pencil, also as close in pigment to a spectrum orange as possible.

The colors in this complementary pair are at their highest saturation. They are as intense as the pigment will allow. When I blended the orange and blue to make different tones of browns, the saturation got less and less as the color got closer to a pure brown and away from the bluish tones or the orangey tones.

The value, or the lightness, of the orange is higher than the value of the blue. In other words, the blue is darker than the orange. As the blue and orange are blended, the value of the resulting brown also blended. The orangey-browns are higher in value than the bluish-browns.

Knowing how to use the intensity of the color to create contrast or emphasis in a drawing, and knowing how to manipulate the lightness and darkness for atmospheric or emotional effect are useful tools for artists.
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Complementary Blends 1 - Red and Green

Complementary Blends 1 - Red and Green
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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Many artists are interested in exploring the effects of colors, for example Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella. They have followed the path of scientists like Sir Issac Newton and J. W. Goethe in making charts and designs that demonstrate how colors interact with each other. In this series of drawings, I wanted to look at how many tones of browns I could make with just the two colors of a given complementary pair.

I drew a design that would give enough spaces to show a range of tones, and I repeated the design three times, for the red/green, blue/orange and yellow/violet pairs. The most highly saturated colors of each pair are in the center of the chart. I got them, along with the neutrals caused by blending those most-intense colors, by applying the hardest possible pressure on the pencil. Around the outside I colored a base layer of one of the pair of colors on each side of the design, with varying pressure on the pencil, from heaviest application at the bottom to lightest at the top. Then, I put a second layer of the complementary color on top of the first, with light pressure, to yield a range of tones of browns.

In this drawing, after coloring the center rectangle, I colored a base layer of red on the left, using less and less pressure in the spaces going to the top, and on the right, a similar base layer of green. Then, on the left, I colored an even layer of green over all the spaces, and on the right, an even layer of red.

The design shows a range of seven reddish-browns and seven greenish -browns, in contrast to the fully saturated red/green complementary pair from which they were made. It also demonstrates how the under-color influences the tone of brown that results from the blend, and how the most neutral of the resulting browns is achieved by a relatively even application of both colors in the pair.

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Complementary Pairs 3 - Yellow and Violet

Complementary Pairs 3 - Yellow and Violet

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Yellow and violet are the final pair of complementary colors. Like the other two complementary pairs (blue/orange and red/green), these two colors show high contrast against each other, especially since yellow is a high value or high key color and violet is a low value or low key color. Like the other complementary pairs, yellow and violet also blend together to yield a neutral tone.


To set up this drawing I sliced a lemon into quarters, revealing the pale yellow fruit inside the bright peel. Then I arranged grapes on the same plate, showing dark rich violets and paler tones of pinky maroon. I used three different colors of yellow pencils and three different colors of violets pencils to show the colors of the fruit and the neutral tones of the highlights and shading in the still life.

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Complementary Pairs 2 - Red and Green

Complementary Pairs 2 - Red and Green
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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Red and green are anoather pair of complementary colors. Like the other two complementary pairs (blue/orange and yellow/violet), these two colors show high contrast against each other, yet when blended together they yield a neutral tone.


For this drawing I found a supermarket package of watermelon, showing a lovely rich saturated red fruit and a beautiful pattern of greens in the peel. Complementary colors in one item! I used four different colors of red pencils to get the range of reds and four different colors of green pencils to show the pattern of the peel and the reflections in the packaging tray.


By blending reds and greens, I was able to get the dark brownish tones in the seeds and the stem of the watermelon, and to suggest the shadows under the fruit.
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Complementary Pairs 1 - Blue and Orange

Complementary Pairs 1 - Blue and Orange
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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Blue and orange are complementary colors. Like the other two primary and secondary complementary pairs (red/green and yellow/violet), these two colors show high contrast against each other, yet when blended together they yield a neutral tone.

For this drawing I chose a blue mug, its glaze is almost a pure ultramarine blue, and a plate of orange sections, with the sun shining through the fruit to give luminous orange tones. I used only four different colors of orange pencils and two different colors of blue pencils on white paper.

The dark brownish tones in the reflections in the mug came from darker blue and orange colors, and the shadows on the fruit and under the plate are a lighter tone from the lighter blue and orange colors they were blended with.

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Color Variations 7 - Complementaries

Color Variations 7 - Complementaries

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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A complementary is something that fills up, completes, or makes something else perfect. A "pair of contrasting colors that produce a neutral color when combined in suitable proportion" is Webster's dictionary definition of complementary colors. Red and green are complementary pairs, so are blue and orange, and so are yellow and violet.

An artist who knows that 1) these pairs of colors show a strong contrast when placed next to each other, and also that 2) they mix together to give neutral brownish-grays has two marvellous options for working with color.

I pressed hard on the colored pencil to give as saturated a color as possible, and in the drawing, the ribbon of red, orange and yellow shimmers with a high contrast against the corresponding green, blue and violet sections of the background.
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An Apple A Day 11 ... Watercolor - Washes

Apple on a tray, complementary color washes.
Watercolor on paper, 7 in x 10 in.

An Apple A Day 10 ... Watercolor - Brush Drawing

Apple in the sunshine, brush drawing on complementary color background.
Watercolor on paper, 7 in x 10 in.

An Apple A Day 08 ... Watercolor - Complementary Mixes - Green and Red-Purple

Apple on a tissue, study in complementary color mixes, green and red-purple.

Watercolor on paper, 7 in x 10 in.
These past five exercises in the use of complementary colors are part of an online tutorial in "Power Color" from illustration instructor Mark Mitchell. And there are more of these exercises to come!