Illusions, Subtraction, and Desaturated Wasps (Finale)

First and foremost, my Desaturated Wasps project has finally come to a close.  Our last two paintings had to consist of all the saturation levels we've worked with so far (chromatic, muted, and prismatic).  This project - however boring it may have seemed while I mindlessly went through it - gave me some really awesome tips on how to manipulate mood and lighting with color.  And since I love you guys and don't want you to have to pay $500 dollars to learn them on your own, I will list them for you!

• Chromatic greys (mixtures of multiple hues) create a dull, monotonous, or depressing atmosphere.
• Prismatic colors (pure primary and secondary colors straight out of the tube) create a vibrant, happy, or exciting atmosphere.
• Combining prismatic colors with chromatic greys and muted hues is a way to achieve luminosity without the use of white.  (This is what my last two paintings below were meant to prove)

Combined Saturation Levels (broad range) of a Spider/Hunting Wasp

Combined Saturation Levels (narrow dark range) of a Red Wasp

This last technique was often used by the seventeenth century painter, Rembrandt.  His pieces are famous for the mysterious glowing quality he produced in his subjects.  Rembrandt, however, rarely used pure white in his paintings.  Instead, he created these shimmering and luminous effects by painting pure yellow, red, and orange on top of an entirely chromatic grey color scheme.

Man in a Golden Helmet, 1650, oil on canvas

Night Watch (detail), 1642, oil on canvas

Philosopher in Meditation, 1642, oil on wood

But this stuff is just babytown frolics compared to what we are learning now in Color Theory.  Everyone is probably familiar with, or has at least seen the work of, Josef Albers.  He is one of the most influential color theorists since the twentieth century and spent more than forty years researching the relativity of color.  Albers believed, and proved, that color is never seen as it physically is, and that the perception of color is completely dependent on its surroundings.  Our first study of his work was the illusion of creating different values from the same color by changing its background.  My teacher let us loose with a stack of three hundred color cards without any hints on how to achieve this, but eventually I discovered some tricks:

• This works best if you use a medium value color as your tiny square.
• Choose a darker value of the same color as your tiny square for one of the backgrounds.
• For the other background, use a light value of any color.

And "veni vidi vici" (God, I miss Doug <-- also why is there not a better quality version of this on YouTube), you have created two different values from the same color.  It's kind of iffy with a couple of the squares I made.. but the best way to see the effect is to look at the division of where the two backgrounds meet.

1 Color, 2 Values study

Here is an actually good representation from one of Albers' own experiments:

(ps. If you are interested in his work you should check out his book/bible on color theory, Interaction of Colors)

Finally, I'll end this post with my Figure Drawing update.  Lately, we have been working with subtractive shading.  This is a technique where you cover your paper with a layer of dark medium (in our case, charcoal) and erase the lightest areas of the subject.  We did one small practice sketch (first drawing below) and one large final piece (last drawing).  For the most part, I only used vine charcoal on her body - with many many layers of fixative - and I used soft compressed charcoal to create the dark shadows in the fabric.

figure study using subtractive shading - done in vine and compressed charcoal (30min)

Subtractive Project (Days 1-2)

Subtractive Project (final) - done in vine and compressed charcoal