A Landscape Painting

1
A Landscape Painting

• My Notes on Color Painting
• By Iskandar Syed
• PHY214

2
The painter is not dealing with light but with
paints

• Paints are subtractive when they are mixed
  because they deal with pigments and not colored
  light
• Each color has different physical and
  psychological properties that through a
  composition can be exposed brilliantly
• The three main physical properties are
• Opaque
• Translucent
• Transparency

3
Hue, Saturation and Brightness

• The Ostwald color system uses three different
  focuses in distinguishing its color system
• Dominant wavelength The highest visible
  wavelength frequency in the spectrum is the
  dominant
• Purity is also commonly referred to as
  saturation but in the OCS is primarily dealing
  with isolating the color as an individual hue
  unsaturated
• Luminosity can also be brightness however
  luminosity is directly referring to the
  sensitivities of colors reflective properties

4
Mixing Colors

• In this painting, I used five individual hues
  including Titanium white. Those pigments are
• Cadmium Yellow Extra-Deep
• Cobalt Green Deep
• Carmin Lake Extra
• Cobalt blue turquoise
• Titanium White
• All of these pigments are opaque however
  manipulated properly these pigments can act as
  either translucent or transparent.

5
The paintings underpainting
Blue Turquoise
Blue Green
Blue Red
Green
Yellow green
Dark Blue Green
Green
Black
Magenta
Carmin Lake / Red
Yellow Brown
Yellow
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Technique and Process

• These three general steps are taken to correspond
  between the process of laying down colors and in
  composing the painting, in terms of a background,
  middle ground and foreground.
• In order to retain pure colors I had to
  systematically choose which colors were painted
  down initially in the composition as opaque
  colors
• After the initial opaque colors were set, the
  next step was to lay a secondary color
  manipulating its translucent properties
• The third and final step is to glaze over the
  painting using made greys, made blacks and
  greens.

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Color Mixes

• A list of saturated colors that I have mixed for
  this painting are
• Magenta 1Carmin Lake 2Cobalt Blue Turquoise
• Yellow Green ½Cadmium Yellow 1Cobalt Green
• Yellow Brown 2Cadmium Yellow ½Carmin Lake
  1Cobalt Green
• Brown Dull 1Magenta 1Cadmium Yellow
• Dark Blue Green ½Magenta 1Cobalt Green
• Brown Black 1Magenta ½Cadmium Yellow
  ½Green
• A list of unsaturated mixes are
• Grey Green ½Titanium White ½Brown Dull
• Grey Blue ½Titanium White ½Cobalt Blue
  Turquoise ¼Cobalt Green
• Grey Magenta ½Titanium White ½Magenta
  ¼Cadmium Yellow

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The painting in four quadrants
This portion of the painting is a play on
saturation and unsaturated pigments. The effect
this makes can be seen in the lower bricks and
upper bricks where light is hitting it.
Unsaturated
This sky consists of an under painting of Blue
Turquoise, Titanium white and in the north west
area some Carmin Lake. The atmosphere was glazed
on with green which reflect the trees. The tips
of the crumbling wall is highlighted with made
greys.
Saturated
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The physics behind the colors of the bricks goes
back to the Ostwald color system. The Red in the
bricks are a dominant wavelength, which weighs
down the painting. By using a neutralizer like a
made grey, it created a kind of transparent
filter over it which dulled the intense red
Magenta mix.
The lower portions of the painting consists
mainly of saturated colors. In order to balance
this portion with the upper portion I used made
greys. I used Magenta grey on the edge of the
bricks and Green grey on the walkway.
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Conclusion

• Pure colors are saturated hues and when mixed the
  results are subtractive color mixing
• Unsaturated colors are positive colors mixed with
  white
• Dominant wavelengths correspond to the humans
  eye sensitivity to color and this in return
  affects the viewer in a psychological and
  physical way
• Made Greys are a useful color in blending
  portions of unsaturated and saturated areas of a
  painting
• It is useful to note that when mixing pigments,
  try to only mix two colors at a time if not the
  result is a dull color.