The Color Strategy
When we look at the colors of the landscape, it is unlikely that we would ever say,
“Those colors don’t look harmonious.” Natural light is real, so it never fails to be convincing. But how does a landscape painter, in the artificial world of her painting, maintain that same sense of harmony? How does she ensure that her colors will cohere and work well together?
Our initial color choices are based, in part, on nature’s palette. We borrow her hues and chromaticity, her temperatures and value relationships. But that is only a starting point. Inevitably, an effective color solution is a dialogue between the colors offered by the subject and the colors we bring to the painting in order to achieve our intended goals. This territory, in which observed color is augmented with knowledge and theory, is the province of the color strategy.
A complete color strategy is actually a three-part system for building harmony in landscape painting. Chief among these is the color strategy, the governing “formula”
for our color harmony. Working in tandem with the strategy is the practice of color grouping, which maintains the cohesiveness of colors by organizing them into related families. And finally, the limited palette, which encourages unified color mixtures by using a narrow, but carefully selected set of pigments.
DEFINING THE COLOR STRATEGY
A color strategy is like a formula for color interactions, a set of colors that relate in specific ways to produce a desired effect. Like the musician who composes in a particular key in order to maintain certain types of harmonic relationships, the landscape painter relies on a color strategy to help guide their color choices and ensure that they produce the desired effects.
To make meaningful color choices in the artificial world of our painting, we have to go
beyond imitating the colors we see in the subject. We also need a structured plan or
strategy that can bind our colors together and form landscape like harmonies.
A color strategy seeks to answer the landscape painter’s eternal question: What particular colors and in what arrangement will support my visual intent, be it to convey an emotion or mood, a time of day, or a particular color of light?
Some painters may see the use of a strategy as an overly formal process. Isn’t color an intuitive process not governed by formal rules? Only in part. All painters have their own
“color personalities” and instincts which will guide their color choices. But those choices are also informed by experience and knowledge. In the final analysis, if a painting has meaningful color, if it achieves its intended visual goal, then it will have a color strategy that we can see and identify. A color strategy pays respect to the idea that color choices are never arbitrary.
THE “COMPLETE” COLOR STRATEGY
When artists talk about “color strategies,” they are usually referring to the color relationships we are so familiar with on the standard 12-step color wheel: the most common being monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split-complementary, and triadic. We call these relationships “strategies,” but as we will, see they are actually interactions of hue. And although they are an important part of an overall strategy, they are only one part.
A complete strategy is a much more encompassing idea, one that considers all the contrasts and interactions of color that may contribute to a successful color solution.
——————————————————————————————————————————
THE MEANING OF HARMONY
Harmony is typically defined as a “pleasing arrangement of colors forming a consistent whole.” It is a state in which all the colors in the painting work well together; none feel out of place. For the landscape painter, harmony has an additional meaning. Only in the landscape can we find effects like atmospheric perspective or colored light that unifies everything it touches under a
harmonizing glaze. Although an effective strategy may form an agreeable arrangement of colors we might consider harmonious, not every color strategy necessarily suggests atmosphere and unified light.
——————————————————————————————————————————
CONTRAST, THE ANIMATING FORCE OF THE COLOR STRATEGY
Painters are drawn to the landscape in large part because of the respect it pays to natural light. We are in awe of the rosy reds of the sunset or the colored hues of the atmosphere itself — and we seek to “capture” it all in paint. Yet, any painter who has ever attempted to translate light into paint has had to come to terms with a harsh truth: pigments on paper or canvas are incapable of expressing the range of brilliance and luminosity of natural light. How then can the landscapist make this translation?
How can they to choose colors that parallel the radiance of natural light?
In the artificial world of our paintings, the only means at our disposal for creating this illusion is color contrast. What breathes life into colors, what makes them sing, are the contrasts or
differences between them.
There are four primary modes of contrast: hue, temperature, value, and intensity.
Every single strategy can be understood in terms of how these forms of contrast interrelate.
Color contrasts are the building blocks of every strategy. A strategy is not built with just one or two of types of contrast. Hue, temperature value, and intensity are at work in every single painting. When orchestrated into a delicately balanced color
composition they are responsible for every effect and every moment of color magic ever
produced on paper or canvas. Without contrast, there is no interaction between color,
and with no interaction there is no illusion of light.
THE FOUR MODES OF CONTRAST
Each form of contrast is a relative measure; that is, we judge a color to be dark or light, cool or warm, pure or desaturated, only in terms of how it compares to other colors. Nor is contrast a binary choice, either. We don’t have to choose between “contrast” or “no contrast.” It occurs in greater or lesser degrees. In fact, even little to no contrast is still a form of contrast.
CONTRAST OF HUE
The most basic type of color contrast comes in the form of hue: the basic color family into which the color falls. Shown here are three colors, blue, violet, and yellow. They are each a different hue. As we will see later in this chapter, the color interactions referenced on the color wheel (e.g., as analogous, complementary, etc.) specify particular types of interactions between hues.
A COLOR STRATEGY CONSIDERS: What are the dominant hue families in the painting? What are the subordinate hues? (See Chapter 00, Color Grouping.) And most important, do the hue families form specific color interactions, such as complementary, analogus, etc.?
CONTRAST OF VALUE
Value is the relative lightness or darkness of color. In this trio of swatches, the blue in the middle is the same blue as appears in the hue swatches. The blue on the left is the same blue, but darker in value, while the blue on the right is lighter in value. Value has enormous implications for defining shape and form and is the primary means of rendering light and shadow.
A COLOR STRATEGY CONSIDERS: What is the relative strength the value contrasts, and to what degree can those contrasts be used to suggest light? Of special importance to the
landscape painter is how the relative lightness or darkness of a color has a direct effect have on how colors are perceived. We’ll explore this topic in detail in Chapter 00.
CONTRAST OF TEMPERATURE
Temperature can be thought of as a subset of hue, but it’s such an important form of contrast, that it is helpful to consider it as its own form of contrast. Color temperature describes the relative “warm” or “cool” characteristic of a color. Of course, this is extremely subjective. No color is always cool or always warm because our perception of its temperature is dependent on how it appears alongside other colors. Here, both swatches are blue and both are the same value, but they differ in temperature. The one on the left hints toward the green side of the spectrum, while the one the left hints toward the violet side. It’s not as important to be able to label a color as “cool” or warm” than it is to simply recognize the difference in temperature.
A COLOR STRATEGY CONSIDERS: What is the balance between cool and warm colors? Is the strategy predominantly warm or predominantly cool? Or do cool and warm colors play off each other? Remember, even within an all-warm or all-cool framework, as in the swatches above, their can still be a differences of temperature.
CONTRAST OF SATURATION
Any given color can be very pure and saturated, or it can be very desaturated or “dull.” As with the other color contrasts, saturation is a relative measure. On the left, the blue is pure, fully saturated; on the right, that same blue is less pure and desaturated. It appears duller when compared to swatch on the left. A note on terminology: Desaturated colors are sometimes calls
“grays” or “neutrals.” And saturation is also called “chroma” and “intensity,” and the terms are used interchangeably. For consistency, I will use only “saturation” in this text.)
A COLOR STRATEGY CONSIDERS: Is the overall harmony built with pure, saturated colors or neutral colors—or a combination of both? Are saturated colors complemented with neutrals color, in order to make them appear that much more saturated? Can a low saturation or neutral
strategy be used a means to create a unifying harmony? (See, The Harmony of Neutrals, page 00.)
THE COLOR WHEEL AND CONTRASTS OF HUE
Each of the relationships mapped on the color wheel are contrasts of hue. As noted earlier, these relationships do not form a complete strategy. Value, temperature, and saturation are also at play. But contrasts of hue are particularly useful in building color interactions that can generate the many moods and color effects that are so much a part of landscape painting.
——————————————————————————————————————————
MAPPING THE COLOR INTERACTIONS
The standard 12-step color wheel is a handy reference for the various contrasts of hue. It is logically organized, showing each of the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, and shows how each of the various color interactions relate to one another. However, the color wheel is limited in that is only shows interactions of hue. It cannot show the precise value, temperature or saturation level of a color colors need to be in the context of the painting. Some color wheels (like the one shown here) attempt to indicate some value differences, others differences of saturation. But none can express every possible permutation of hue, value and saturation. The Munsell color system attempts to solve this problem with a complex three-dimensional model of color, allowing the user to find a color that is numerically specified to a particular hue, value, temperature, and saturation. Any color system, however, only shows individual colors; it cannot tell you how to mix them or how they fit into the overall strategy.
