Of course, studying the nature of an object in order to paint it means coming to terms with color, and paint. Humans can see only a tiny fraction of the available visual spectrum, and what we can see is quite a bit greater than the spectrum that can be conveyed with paint. So the more successful the result the greater the deception.
Color has three factors, not two: Hue (what we think of as the main color of an object); Value (how light or dark something is); and Chroma (how intense a color is.)
Value is 80% of successful representation, and harder to pull off than one might think. One of the reasons for this is that humans do not have the ability to see all the values in front of them at once. We focus on one area at a time. Every time our focus shifts our eyes recalibrate, and we lose the overall relationships of forms.
We see just over 1,000 gradations of tone whether we are looking a the complete value scale — pure white to pure black — or just the last two darkest steps. This is a good thing if we’re in a cave trying to determine if the thing we see is a stick or a snake. But it’s a drawback when trying to see how dark the shadow under a nose is relative to the other shadows of the face. So it’s very helpful to be able to determine the values we’re seeing.
This image shows the beginning stage of a still life, as well as the final image. You can see that I start with the darker values, usually the third step on an 11-step value scale.
The vertical scale at the left shows two yellow-orange hues in the values from white to black. These two colors represent over 95% of all human skin tones. All races fall within, or very close to, this range. Asian, African, Irish, etc. There are exceptions, but even those are not too far away.
The left scale shows each hue at the same chroma, the second step away from neutral.
The scale above shows one hue (the left-most of the vertical scale) at the seventh value. Only the chroma — the intensity of color — changes. This particular scale represents one half of the average color of human skin. The other half is slightly yellower. Skin tones are much lower in chroma than most artists think. Average caucasian flesh falls right between the color string on the left and that on the right.
There are exceptions to this rule, of course. Africans tend to have darker, more chromatic, skin tones with more pronounced light planes. Asians tend to be slightly yellower — but NOT yellow. Their skin tends to be only one hue step towards yellow.
It’s surprising that all ethnic groups fall within such a narrow hue and chroma range, but it’s true, being verified on many volunteers. With just a few slight variants, everyone falls in this range.
The system I use for mixing colors allows me to hit my target colors with a high degree of accuracy. I am able to determine what colors I am seeing, how the hue and chroma shift as they move up and down the value scale — almost every object I’ve studied and analyzed has an arcing hue string and an arcing chroma string.
I’ve only found two subjects that did not have a hue spiral. Every other form makes slight hue shifts as it moves into and away from the light. Being able to see and paint these hue shifts brings a great deal of liveliness to form, especially skin tones, which are not flat or opaque.
Very beautiful effects can be achieved this way, if the HVC of the under-layer and over-layer relate properly. When painting people I often lay a veil of slightly redder color at the 4th chroma over slightly more orange color at the 2nd chroma, both at the same value, and apply the paint in a broken layer so that the combination of the two can create a shimmery effect. The variations of this sort of color combining are infinite, at least practically speaking and can be used to great finishing effects.
I am beginning a figure piece in 5YR at the 2nd chroma. I’ve worked up to the 6th value and all the forms are solid. I find it much easier to add local colors to a uniform underpainting than to bring an underpainting in which the hues and values are more scattered. It’s our eyes that exaggerate the differences in hues and values. When we see flesh outside the normal range it can be creepy, and is called the Uncanny Valley. Figures which appear to be too neutral look like they’ve dies, when they seem to be flushed with bluish blood they look like a corpse whose blood has settled to the lower parts of a the body, and when the skin is too high in chroma the subject looks like it’s been in bed with a bad fever.
It’s relatively easy to analyze and mix the colors of human skin, certainly easier than attempting the same with a rose. But maybe that’s just me? If you’d like to learn to mix any color with 95%+ accuracy, and do it every time, contact me.
[contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]