Obtaining Brilliancy of Color

[llis]

Can anyone give examples of the following statement by Andrew Loomis in his book Creative Illustration?

"Here is one of the best ways in the world to obtain
brilliancy of color: Keep your color most intense on the edges of
the lighted areas, where it merges into shadow. This seems to cast
an aura of additional color over the whole area. Just taking a
local color of the light and rubbing it into a darker color of the
shadow (which most of us do, most of the time) produces no
brilliancy. It is apt to be just color in the light, then mud,
then reduced color in the shadow. This is one of the least known
and least practiced truths."

[Einion]

I've been thinking about this for a few minutes and it actually makes a lot of sense although I wouldn't have put it in quite these terms. If you consider lighting across a form, from highlight through the midtone to the shadow the colour will be most pure, i.e. highest in chroma, just before it turns into the shadow where value and chroma drop (roughly speaking the local-colour area). This should arise as a natural consequence of painting realistically given simple lighting.
In the example I just knocked up, the area of purest colour is easy to see and lies in a rough arc between the edge of the diffuse highlight and the beginning of the shadow.

Einion

[llis]

Thanks Einion.... your example really is helping me understand. Now could you put up an example, using your same setup, of how most folks handle color..... as in

Originally posted by llis from a quote by Loomis
"Just taking a
local color of the light and rubbing it into a darker color of the
shadow (which most of us do, most of the time) produces no
brilliancy. It is apt to be just color in the light, then mud,
then reduced color in the shadow. This is one of the least known
and least practiced truths."

I think it would further clairfy what Loomis is saying.

[diphascon]

The "contrast enhancement" effect is well known for edges with light-dark-contrasts. It is a feature of our retina that bright zones suppress each others, so at these edges the bright areas suppress the dark ones so that they get even a little darker, and the dark ones have nothing to suppress the bright ones so these get a little brighter, and the edge looks more pronounced as it is.

If you use a bright colour on a dark background this contrast enhancement works to push the bright area. In addition there are as well similar contrast enhancement effects with colour contrasts (red vs green, blue vs yellow) in our retina. If you have two contrasting colours (eg a bright, colourful object on a dull background) and make the edge region most colourful (and mix a bit of the complementary to the background) this adds to the pop-out of the colourful area.

cheers

martin

[LarrySeiler]

An interesting topic and read Llis! Appreciate the time in producing your graphic Ninion, and the lesson on the retina Martin! Thanks all....

I know the more I paint plein airs, the more sensitive to color I am becoming out of doors, and the bolder I feel I'm growing to tweak out every strength of color possible. More and more, I'm assuming to let colors mix in the viewer's eye, and craft the stroke to be as important as the pigment chosen.

Good stuff to chew over....

Larry

[Einion]

I'm not sure if I have it quite right but this might be a fair representation of how one might do the same example badly. If you compare it to the first one there is no band of high-chroma local colour, instead just a washy highlight
that transitions into the halftones.

Einion