Substituting Color by Doug Nelson

Impressionism, without a doubt, introduced a new way of seeing color in the world around us. The Impressionists broke from the traditional classical studies and created palettes of bright intense colors. Often viewing local color as blasé, they were able to separate and exaggerate what they saw and create mood and emotion in their work.

Most artists have been taught, either through classes or self study, that good drawing skills are essential to a good painting. A well drawn image possessing a good composition can be a successful painting no matter the colors chosen, within reason, when keeping value changes in mind. Perhaps the best way to explain this method is with a basic exercise in value.

If you were painting a still life of a blue ball, you might have something like the painting in example 1. Your light source above and in front of the subject would give you your lightest value and progress around and down the ball to your darkest value. It would be a simple matter to then substitute the color of the ball and see it as orange (quinacridone burnt orange) as shown in example 2. The values are maintained, but in a different color or hue.

Now the fun begins. Using the color wheel in this exercise, assign blue as the middle value in the next painting. On one side of blue in the color wheel is violet, which will be assigned your darkest value, and green to the other side which will be your lightest value of color.

Example 3 uses carbazole violet, cobalt blue and Winsor green. You can choose to keep hard edges on the color changes or blend each one into the other, keeping in mind that some colors will not blend together successfully. You may also choose to change the value of each color as well.

Example 4 is not as drastic a contrast as the previous example but follows the same procedure of assigning color for each value–quinacridone burnt orange, anthraquinoid red and permanent yellow in this case. While rendering the ball in value change alone may appear more realistic, reassigning the color gives this simple object some excitement–more of an individual life.

The painting “New York Easter Egg” uses the same basic assignment of hues as described above in example 3. Also introduced are some warm hues to help balance the composition. Obviously, the building rendered is not blue, but it exaggerates and explains what was seen that cool day in New York.

Another example of this method can be seen in the painting “Soldiers of Redemption.” This was a little more complicated as cool and warm colors were assigned to express the grandeur of this majestic cathedral in Kansas City.

This method can be as simple or as complicated as you choose it to be. Approaching a painting in this manner is very exciting and expressive; hopefully you will feel that, too.