Dorothy Gauvin
by Dorothy Gauvin
Art Gallery Gauvin
To contact Dorothy, click on her photo, which will take you to her web site and e-mail
©Dorothy Gauvin, 2003
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Dorothy Gauvin |
Articles of Interest for Artists by Dorothy Gauvin Art Gallery Gauvin To contact Dorothy, click on her photo, which will take you to her web site and e-mail |
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Beyond the Rainbow
A Restricted Palette Can Free Your Individuality
A typical catalogue from a manufacturer of artists' paints will boast a
bewildering list of colours. In purples alone, there might be a dozen to choose
from. Yet I've never heard a really convincing argument for having even one tube
of ready-mixed purple on your palette.
The makers' advertisements can give an impression that the more colours you have
at hand, the more easily you can express your individual style of creativity.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The more colours you have, the more
you'll be tempted to use them straight from the tube. Every other person with a
big range of tubes will do the same. That is the explanation for the sameness y
ou see at charity Art Fairs.
It doesn't have to be that way. Setting limits can set you free. Free to
experiment. To find mixtures that will be exclusive to you. Fellow artists often
remark on the range and subtlety of colour in my work. Then they visit my studio
and exclaim in disbelief when they see only nine tubes on my palette - two of
them Whites, one a Black.
(Well, I admit that I do keep four supplementary pigments on my palette. They
have special uses and I'll tell you all about them later in this article.)
There are only three primary hues: Red, Yellow, and Blue. The names on all those
pretty tubes - viridian, ultramarine etc - refer to the pigments the manufacturer
has made. So, what about the rainbow? It shows more than three colours; anyone
can see that. Here's why: In 1672, Isaac Newton showed that "white" sunlight is
actually composed of myriad different-coloured rays of visible light. Each ray
is refracted at a different angle as it passes through a prism. Aged only 29,
Newton presented his startling discovery to the Royal Society of London, in the
first scientific paper he ever published.
When light is passed through a prism - e.g. the crystal pendant of a chandelier,
the diamond in an engagement ring, the drops of water vapour in a rainbow - it
separates into all the colours our eye perceives. Where the three primary hues
merge, they form the secondaries. Red and yellow merge into orange; yellow and
blue into green; blue and red into purple. But you need only the three primaries,
plus white and black, to mix any colour your painting requires.
Accurate colour mixing is like baking a cake. It's as simple, and as precise,
as that. You need a list of ingredients and a recipe, or method, to follow. A
fter that, it's just a science anyone can learn. The success of a painting
depends as much on harmony and balance of colour as it does on the strength of
design. Here, I'm only concerned with alerting you to the advantages of keeping
your palette simple. I've already mentioned one: the development of colour
mixtures as unique to you as your hand-writing. A second, and most useful one,
is gaining control over those pigments that are notorious for "taking over" a
painting. Think of blues like phthalo and cerulean, and most greens.
Not many artists use a palette as limited as mine, and you may not be comfortable
with it. But Rembrandt's palette was even more restricted, and look what he did
with it! For what it's worth, here's mine:
#800000 Flake White
You'll see that I've chosen the three primaries in both a warm and a cool hue,
and in two forms: an opaque and a transparent. This opens the door to adventure,
in the use of scumbling and glazing techniques.
The two Whites give the overall usefulness of "fat" Titanium, with the crisp
brushstrokes allowed by the denser, faster-drying Flake. You'd be already aware
that neither White nor Black is actually a colour. An object that reflects all
wavelengths of light will appear as white, an object that absorbs all
wave-lengths will appear as black.
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You'll notice I keep no Green on my regular palette. This is the main reason for the Black. Mixed with Cad Yellow, or one of the Blues, plus White or Burnt Sienna, it gives an infinite range of greens. (My other uses for Black are to make the pupil of the eye in a face, and to mix very dark browns.) Please do not ever use Black just to darken the value or "tone" of a colour. You'll "dirty" the colour mix and end up with a deadly dull painting. I can't emphasise too strongly the danger of this approach. But I can tell you a true story: When I first set out to get my training, classical painting was out of style in the art colleges of this country. In fact, one lecturer stated that "the history of painting began in New York in 1960." Because I was determined to make paintings rather than designs, I had to find for myself a classical artist who would take pupils. As it happened, he taught the "tonal" method. So we spent the first day drawing up a grid on which we made all the gradations from White through to Black. Over the following two days, we laboured at developing every value of the many pigments he believed necessary, by mixing them with the greys we'd made in the first exercise. For the next two lessons, we applied this method to our models: a stack of three books, a rag-doll clown. In memory, I still see the results: competent but as individual as a set of plastic spoons. When this poor man suffered a heart attack on the golf course and died, my sorrow for his family's loss was selfishly over-taken by my dismay at losing my teacher. In hindsight, his removal was the best thing that could happen to my development. With time, I found another teacher, who taught me how to really see colour. I'm eternally grateful to her. Now to those four supplementary pigments: Raw Umber is extremely versatile. Used with plenty of glaze medium, it can quickly reduce any passage of colour that appears too bright in the composition. As well, mixed into White, it perfectly renders a wintry sky or the pages of a book or a piece of much-laundered linen. Madder Brown, when mixed with varying amounts of White, produces a range of purples ideally suited for mountain ranges or evening skies, free from the cloying effect of ready-mixed pigments. Burnt Sienna is a reddish earth pigment, invaluable for under-painting in a landscape that will be mainly greens and blues. Mixed with ultramarine, it produces dense browns for tree trunks, or hair tones of people and animals. Used as a transparent glaze, it can impart a warm, "tanned" appearance to skin tones. A Note: A small amount of Burnt Sienna is mixed into white to produce the pigment manufacturers call "Flesh." Obviously, you don't need it! In any case, flesh is usually covered by skin, and for that you'll want to make a much wider range of mixes. Viridian is essential for painting the crystalline waters that surround a tropical island or for rendering the iridescence of mother-of-pearl or of opals. It's only other use, as far as I'm concerned, is its role in mixing lively, transparent darks for shadows. A beautiful range of darks results when Viridian is combined with Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine. Endless books have been written on the science of colour mixing. You will no doubt enjoy reading some of them. But if you just want to get on with your painting, the best thing you can do is to familiarise yourself with The Colour Wheel. This is one of the most useful tools ever devised for painters, cutting through the mystery and confusion. Today, my hope is that I've given you the confidence to see that you can take control of colour by simplifying your palette. To illustrate the point: Think of a healthy baby, just past the crawling stage but not yet walking without some help. He's so curious about everything, eager to explore and touch and taste. But he's behind bars, in a playpen. Sounds restrictive? Any parent could tell you the kid has more freedom within the borders of his pen than he'd have if he were on the loose. Safe from dangers that he lacks the experience to recognise, he's left free to investigate all the possibilities of what he has at hand. And he can do it in his own time, in his own special style. |