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Who Cares About Color?

While working with students, I am constantly faced with the situation of the individual having the difficulty of making the exact color to match the reference material whether it be plein air or working from a photo. My usual comment – “Who cares if it matches?”

Matching color seems to be one of the two big hang-ups with beginning artists (the other being obtaining the correct value – subject for a later writing). Color is one of the most expressive qualities you deal with when painting. When selecting colors for a painting it is what you want the color to say that is far more important than duplicating the exact color of the shape you see. I have personally overcome this problem by creating black and white graphite value studies of each subject before beginning the actual painting. Once I have my drawing completed on the painting surface, I put away any color reference and work from the value study allowing my color selection to express more of what I want to say.

An example of this is the painting NOVEMBER. The source material for NOVEMBER was a photograph taken on a bright sunny day in the middle of summer, and the barn was actually white. The colors were quite vibrant with sharp greens, crisp whites and bright blue sky colors. None of the qualities – especially the colors – on the reference photo appealed to me or fit with what I wanted the painting to convey. What appealed to me were the shapes and arrangement of the buildings, and even these were altered a bit.

November painting

November – 12″H x 24″W