Robert Brackman once told a student: “The problem with your painting is that the colors feel like paint. They need to feel like light.” The idea that Brackman was getting at is this: we want our paintings to feel like the sensations of light that move us so that we don’t need to refer to something else for their meaningfulness. So how do we make paint feel like light? Before we can answer that question we first need to understand how fundamentally different paint is from light. So first, a little detour.

Prismatic Color

First, let’s take a look at light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light is (electromagnetic) energy, not unlike radio or microwaves. The visible portion of that energy is called light. White light is composed of seven different colors, each having its own wavelength: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (ROY G BIV). Infrared has the longest wavelength and ultraviolet has the shortest. So when white light passes through a prism, white light’s constituent colors refract or bend at different angles, given the different wavelengths of the colors. Infrared passes through the prism more easily and thus bends just a little, whereas ultraviolet slows down more than the others and refracts the most. This set of refracted colors are called prismatic colors. The palette I use, as did many Impressionists such as Monet, is composed of prismatic colors.

Complementary Colors

The phrase “complementary colors” often figures into discussions about Impressionism and is often misunderstood, but it is easy to explain. If we had a light for each prismatic color (each color in the rainbow) and combined or added all those lights together, what color of light would result? The answer is white. We may say, then, that light is additive because when we add lights of differing wavelengths (hues) together, the resulting light is always lighter than any given color in the mix.

Now suppose we took one color of light away from all the rest – say an emerald green – and then recombined the remaining colors. We would call that resulting, recombined color the complementary color of emerald green. And as it turns out this color would be a cool red. I can prove this to you.

It is easy to find out what the complementary color is of any color by doing the following exercise. If we stare at emerald green steadily for about thirty seconds, our retinas tire of that color so much so that if we then quickly stare at something white (all colors), our tired retinas will not receive well emerald green, but they would receive well all the remaining colors of the spectrum which would be, by definition, emerald green’s complementary color.

So stare at the emerald green below for thirty seconds while covering up the cool red with your hand. Then cover up both colors below with your hands and quickly stare at a white area of the screen. You will see, faintly, the complementary color of emerald green which is a coolish red.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paint Is Subtractive

Look at the same colors below but this time they are paint, not light. You can see immediately that when we mix the emerald color and the coolish red color, it becomes a little darker than both colors and the more you mix together or combine various colors, the darker the resulting color becomes. Paint is the opposite of light. It is subtractive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, you should know that if you mix any two complementary colors together with a little white you’ll get a middle grey.

So here’s the question: what can we do to make paint feel like light?

Broken Color: Making Paint Feel Like light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just to be clear, when we try to make paint feel like light, we are talking about the situation where we see two or more colors in the same place. The sky is often such a place. I will see different kinds of blues but also different kinds of warms (often a very light quinacridone or pink, light yellows, and/or light orange) – not equal in intensity to the blues but vibrating within the field of blues nonetheless. So when we place these colors side by side or perhaps use them in an overlapping fashion, we are actually breaking these colors apart. Hence, we call the effect broken color. If we did not break the colors we see into separate pieces, but mixed them together, our areas of vibrating colors would get muddy. Paint is subtractive, remember.

I have 5 arrows pointing to examples of broken color in the image above. The first arrow points to a red bush. I have used different types of red corresponding to the kinds of red that I see, but instead of filling in the entire bush with light and dark reds, I also leave areas of pure white canvas open in the under-painting so that in the painting stage I have the opportunity to allow pieces of white, from the canvas, to peek through. This makes the bush feel more alive with energy.

Arrow #2 points to another kind of broken color; this time instead of leaving the canvas open to shine through, I have placed very light, off-white strokes of color next to very light strokes of yellow-green in order to create the feeling of light.

Arrow #3 points to the grass where again I have let the white canvas show through along with strokes of different kinds of light green that I see. Arrow #4 points to a similar use of color in the shadow as does Arrow #5.

The painting below is 36×52 inches. If you look around the painting you will again see instances of broken color. Keep in mind that when we place different colors next to each other they have to be the same value, otherwise the painting will have seem to have “measles.” So when we paint into the darks and then the middle values and finally into the lights, the juxtaposed colors we choose for each value range must be the same value, if they are to mix optically at a distance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s zoom into the area within the blue square shown in the painting above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above you can see raw white canvas shining through the lights of the yellow flowers, and at the bottom of the vase and on the top surface of the wall. I have also placed very light colors in the same areas to help create a shimmering feeling. Notice the different blues, pinks, and warm greys on the vase itself.

Below is a painting of Lake Como from a hill. It was a warm, muggy day. There was lots of grey, no real bright colors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, again, let’s zoom into the area marked by the blue rectangle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had tinted this canvas a very light warm-greyish color because I wanted to paint into the atmospheric feeling that I was getting when I started. Therefore, I didn’t want pieces of white canvas to shine through. The entire scene was too “tonal” for that. But I did want pieces of the tinted canvas to shine through as pieces of broken color across the entire painting.

Another dimension of broken color is that we can scatter our strokes if the feeling of color that we are responding to covers a broad area. Notice two different kinds of light blue that I used in the water and the sky, vibrating with pieces of the tinted canvas coming through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is a painting of a woman standing between flowers and tall ornamental grass. This time, when we zoom in, we can see that the shady side of her dress has several different prismatic colors, some of which are reflected light from the grass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And lastly, below is Monet’s Mueles (28.6×36.4 in) that recently sold for $110.7 million. Can you see evidence of broken color?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please leave questions or comments in the comment box if you have any.