how do you build up color?

[Patrick1]

I can think of a few ways of building up color in a painting:

1) paint from dark/shade to light- first painting in all the dark base/shadow color(s) or start with a dark canvas, and then gradually building up the lighter colors over top. Much of the darks and shadows don't need to be actively painted in later because they're already there

2) direct painting- block in the overall color of the main parts of the painting and then add the shadows and highlights later to build up color and form

3) paint from light to dark- start light or white and build up the darks. Watercolor is usually done this way - anyone work this way in oils or acrylics?


Which method do you prefer and why? Is one method more conducive to realism or realness than any other? Is one method better for impressionism?

[Patrick1]

Up to now, I've mainly worked from dark to light...I like the cohesion that you get in the shadows and the instant look of light that you get when you put a light stroke over dark. I want to try in a more direct style but in the past I've found it more difficult to get cohesion or harmony that way - often a lot of disparate colors without much of an anchor. Maybe using lower chroma will help in that respect.

[TheBaron]

Originally Posted by Patrick1

I can think of a few ways of building up color in a painting:

1) paint from dark/shade to light- first painting in all the dark base/shadow color(s) or start with a dark canvas, and then gradually building up the lighter colors over top. Much of the darks and shadows don't need to be actively painted in later because they're already there

If theres one rule of thumb I found when I first started to paint in oils was that, to paint light to dark I found that I was using more(buying) of the lighter colours to lighten areas of a painting.

So if we paint black shadows first and then lighten them with white we would end up with a whole tube of black and buying more tubes of white.
Not only that it is much easier to add darks to lights when trying to get the precise colour we want and if its the opposite way round we have to add and add the lighter colour and so we could end up with a pile of mud.

Just my two cents worth.

[Einion]

A combo of 1 and 2 would cover 99% of the way I work I think.

Einion

[Mark Sheeky]

For underpainting I most commonly try to put the right tone in the right place first time from a gradient on the palette, so a mix of dark to light and light to dark.

Mark

[WFMartin]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheeky

For underpainting I most commonly try to put the right tone in the right place first time from a gradient on the palette, so a mix of dark to light and light to dark.

Mark

Me, too. I paint a grisaille underpainting. I place my darkest dark, and my lightest light on my palette. I paint on an area requiring my darkest dark, and an area followed by my lightest light, and an area that requires my chosen middle value. Which goes on first makes no real difference to my result. Then I fill in the remaining values with intermediate mixes.

I apply all this at once, mixing and blending them one into the other. I don't work from one corner to the other, as some artists do, but I do try to cover the entire canvas with lights, darks, and middle values simultaneously.

This is an example of a typical resulting grisaille underpainting accomplished by this method:



It usually requires several glazes to get my grisaille to this stage. I apply my lights and darks quite randomly, placing each where it belongs to create the effects that I want.

Bill

[kadon]

This is truly lovely Bill. What do you mean by 'grisaille'?

[Mark Sheeky]

Yep, I do it just like Bill, although moving more slowly instead of working on the entire painting at once (partly because I use mars black and often some solvent in the underpainting medium; this can dry pretty quickly, affecting the smoothness of the blending even by the end of the first day).

A grisaille is a painting in scales of grey (like a black and white photograph).

Mark

[kadon]

A grisaille is a painting in scales of grey (like a black and white photograph).

It's a thing of beauty in itself.

[WFMartin]

Thank you. I find that it is a wonderful basis upon which to glaze very thin layers of color. This grisaille method (or at least one similar to it) was used by some of the old masters, for their glazing techniques.

Here's the grisaille with the first layer of glazed color applied to it. This, in a nutshell, is truly how I "build up color" in my paintings.




"Hearts Afire"...16" x 20" oil on canvas....first color glaze layer applied.

This method of building up color has served me very well, recently. I don't approach each and every painting in this manner, but I've had the most success (in sales and awards) with the ones that I painted by this method. A great plus to this method is that I find it extremely interesting, enjoyable, and gratifying, when I finally reach completion. Many artists suggest that you should enjoy the process, and that is exactly what I find myself doing when using this method.

Bill

[kadon]

Your lovely work fills me with so many questions Bill...

i) Do you glaze with oil or solvent?
ii) How come the colour looks so pure over the black/greyed areas?
iii) Taking one bud by itself how many layers of glaze over that one object?

Are there any demos of this method?

Thank you Patrick for asking these questions and seeking explanations.

Kathy

[WFMartin]

Originally Posted by kadon

Your lovely work fills me with so many questions Bill...

i) Do you glaze with oil or solvent?
ii) How come the colour looks so pure over the black/greyed areas?
iii) Taking one bud by itself how many layers of glaze over that one object?

Are there any demos of this method?

Thank you Patrick for asking these questions and seeking explanations.

Kathy

Kathy,

I glaze with a "medium" that I've concocted for myself, to accomodate my process, and method of painting. I don't consider either "oil" or "solvent", when used by themselves, to be suitable mediums for oil painting. Oil, alone, dries too slowly, and solvent, alone, causes the paint to become underbound (not enough oil clinging to each particle of pigment). This makes for a chalky surface, when dried.

The colors on this painting are NOT as pure as they may appear in this RGB computer-screen image. This is only the very first glaze layer of color, and my painting more closely resembles an old-fashioned, hand-tinted photograph at this stage, and is not quite as bright and saturated as the image on your screen appears. In short, the painting is pretty dull and unimpressive at its present stage, but that will begin to change quite shortly, when I begin to apply further applications color glazes.

At this stage, none of the buds has more than one glaze layer of color.

I've authored a couple of articles/threads, in which I explain my process relatively well, I believe.

Here are the links: http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/32418/530/

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285596

Enjoy.

Bill

[AnnGarlough]

Bill, I have always admired your paintings resulting from grisaille. I am going through a phase of experimenting with different subject matter and media right now. I have promised myself for many years to do a painting by the grisaille method and seeing this post inspires me to get to it! Thanks!

[kadon]

Thank you so much Bill for the links.....will follow them up.

[WFMartin]

Originally Posted by kadon

Thank you so much Bill for the links.....will follow them up.

You are welcome, and thank you, Ann, for your nice comments. Creating a grisalle truly does solve a bunch of preliminary problem, I think.

In keeping with the theme of this thread, this process is a wonderful method of building color, and I use it for perhaps 80-90% of my work. I usually create my grisaille quite accurately for still lifes, but often tend to let it be a bit looser for landscapes.

Sometimes, of course, I don't use a grisaille, at all for landscapes, but instead I begin by roughing in my darks with combinations of umbers and other dark colors.

Ideally, I try to make the grisaille underpainting just a bit flatter and a bit lighter than the resulting painting should be. With highlight areas just a wee bit darker, and my shadow (darks) just a wee bit lighter, that allows "room" so to speak, for glazing further darks over my shadows, and scumbling further lighter colors on my light areas.

However, even if the grisaille doesn't turn out optimum, the painting can still be corrected, during the glazing steps by further lightening or darkening to correct slight imperfections of the grisaille.

The two main things to keep in mind when glazing are to keep each glaze layer thin, and to create a smooth surface over your latest layer, by lightly "beating" or "whisking" the fresh surface with a soft, clean, dry, 1-inch Taklon brush. This flattens brushstrokes, and softens the edges of your subject--a very desirable thing to do in the beginning stages of a painting.

Bill