Color and Light - Ch 10 & 11

Atmospheric Effects:

Sky Blue -
Clouds in front of the sun will be darker grey in the middle and light on the outside while clouds away from the sun will have the sun reflecting on them
. 
The sky will also appear to be more of a dull grey and will be lighter when facing the sun and becomes more saturated when you turn away from the sun

Atmospheric Perspective - 

As objects go back in distance they become lighter, less saturated, and take on a cooler blueish tone, the darkest areas being affected first. 

In contrast, objects that are lighter become warmer rather than cooler in the distance

Reverse Atmospheric Perspective - 

"This happens when moist vapors or dust clouds hover in the air near sunrise or sunset. You have to be looking directly toward the sun to see it."

Golden Hour Lighting - 

When the sun is so low it travels almost parallel to the surface of the earth.

This makes the sky look to be a richer blue and the sunlight is more orange or red in color 

Sunsets - 

The clouds that are higher up will be whiter and the clouds below will be more yellow or red. 

When painting sunsets in plein-air its good to mix the colors first because the sun is going to set fast and will change quickly. 

This sunset obeys three rules that usually apply:
1. Colors gradate to higher value and higher chroma approaching the position of the sun.
2. Hue shifts in broad bands from pale yellows higher up to reddish oranges near the horizon.
3. Foreground elements are not black. They maintain color identity in the darks. This is a big difference compared to how the camera sees a scene like this.

Fog, Mist, Smoke, Dust -

In conditions like this contrast drops as you go back in the scene 

Rainbows - 

Rainbows are lighter than the backgrounds behind them so when painting traditionally you can paint a band of white and put the colors over it to achieve this 

Skyholes and Foliage - 

A tree never will have a solid silhouette against the sky, there will always be holes and gaps in it

Give texture to the sky holes to show the overlapping of leaves and branches

Sunbeams and Shadowbeams - 

Beams of light occur when the following three conditions are met:

1.A high screen of clouds, foliage, or architecture is punctured by a few openings. The canopy must block most of the light to allow a darker backdrop against which the sunbeams can be seen.

2.The air is filled with dust or vapor. The smaller the particles, the more there will be chromatic scattering, making the light source seem more yellow or red (see link). Watery mist won’t affect the color of the light as much as fine dust.

3.The view is toward the sun. Large droplets scatter most of the light forward at small angles to the direction of the light. When you’re looking away from the light source, the beams become invisible.

Dappled Light - 

When each cone of light intersects a sloping surface like a wall, it results in an elliptical shape. On a vertical surface parallel to the picture plane, the long axis of that ellipse will always angle back toward the source of the light.

Clouds Shadow - 

You can use patches of light that comes from clouds to draw the viewers attention 

The edges of the light and shadows must be a soft edge

Snow and Ice - 

A blue sky makes blue shadows and on a cloudy day they will be more gray.

Vertical planes  will be warmer due to reflected light

Water: Reflection and Transparency - 

A reflection of a light object in water will appear slightly darker.

You can see through the water more clearly in the foreground and it becomes more reflective as you move back 

If the water is dirty, and if that dirty water is directly illuminated, the darks will get progressively lighter

The reflections differ from the source in another way. In the reflection, the image is distorted by the wavelets on the water. Even if the wind is very light, tiny waves break up the reflection, and dissolve horizontal lines. Vertical lines, though, are still preserved in the reflection.

In mountain streams the water will be much more colorful with blues and greens 

Color Underwater - 

Color underwater is mostly absorbed. Below ten feet red is mostly taken out and orange and yellow are lost by twenty five feet, leaving everything more blue 

The picture below is a bright red shirt seen underwater

Serial painting- 

Painting the same plein-air studies of the same subject in different lighting conditions

1. Choose a motif that has a piece of sky, some distant reaches of space or mountains, and ideally a house or other white object with planes facing in different directions, because white is the best register of colored light.

2. You can paint the images either on a set of separate panels, or tape off a larger board into equal size increments. But as you work on each study, don’t look at the previous ones.

3. Keep the drawing consistent each time, so that 

the only variable is the light and color. Spend the first day working out the drawing for all the panels, or do one careful line drawing, photocopy it, and glue identical copies down on each separate panel.

4. Paint the subject in different times of day, and if you can, different seasons of the year.