This months artistic tip is all about
Colour!
Understanding how people see and interpret colour can help
you to create a feeling of distance and space or create an enclosed claustrophobic
feeling in your paintings. It can make objects jump out at you even though they
aren’t in the foreground of your painting or areas closer to you in terms of
perspective appear less obvious.
It’s time to get technical and
impress our artistic friends and families with some scientific words :)
Every colour that we see travels
to us on a wave…. not a watery wave but a wave of light. Each colour we see has
a different wave length (the distance between each peak of the wave). Warm colours have a longer wavelength (a
longer distance between each peak of the wave) than cool colours.
Our eyes have lenses in them. As
the light hits our eyes and travels through these lenses, colours with shorter
wavelengths of visible light e.g. blue, are bent by our eye's lenses more than
colours with longer wavelengths e.g. red. As a result each colour is focused onto
a slightly different place on the retinas at the back of our eyes. This is
referred to as Chromatic Aberration.
And now here comes another big word to impress people with…
Chromostereopsis is an illusion
whereby the impression of depth is perceived in a two dimensional object such
as a painting. This illusion of
depth is attributed in some way to the process of chromatic aberration that I
described above. Although there is no clear scientific theory as to exactly why chromostereopsis works but somehow we perceive the warmer colours with longer wavelengths as feeling closer than cooler colours with shorter wavelengths.
Even though we dont fully understand exactly how and why it works,
chromostereopsis can be a fun word to drop into a conversation… try this one ;)
Partner…. "are you still in the studio? When is it supper time?"
Artist…. "I’m very busy exploring the
psychology of chromostereopsis. Can you make supper tonight?"
Do let me know if it gets you extra painting time.
BUT how can we use this illusion
in our paintings?
Basically if you paint an object using a colour with a longer wavelength than the colours you have used around
it, the object will appear to jump out at the viewer even if it’s further away
in the painting in terms of perspective.
Conversely if you use a colour with a
comparatively shorter wavelength it will push things back that are actually closer
in perspective but that you don’t want people to notice as fast or first.
To illustrate this I want you to look
again at the background in the painting I am working on now. I wanted to create
a feeling of separation in terms of space and distance in the area that’s
actually nearest to Alex. I didn’t want the section of the background to the
left of him as you look at it on the screen, or in the bottom section to feel
too close to him even though in terms of perspective it is quite close. I therefore chose an indigo blue as the
predominant colour. This helps to push this section further away in our minds. At
the same time I also wanted to create the feeling of the binary code coming to
us and him from the computerised head in the distance so chose to paint the much
warmer compliment orange for a section of the stream of code further away from
Alex to help create this effect. So although that part of the binary stream is
much further away in perspective distance the change to the warmer orange in
this area helps us feel as if it is much closer to us. To some more imaginative
souls like me it might even create the feeling as if it’s rushing to us.
I have taken the above photo and
manipulated it in Photoshop so the colours are reversed. See now how close the
background nearest to Alex feels to him and how far away that section that was
orange and is now blue feels.
Chromostereopsis is fun isn't it!
Have a play with colours and explore the ‘psychology
of Chromostereopsis’ this weekend.
I'm going to be trying to finish this painting :)
