Click Here to BidContinuing on color mixing I brought up yesterday, the key factor is the purity of the color. If we have very pure blue and very pure yellow, then we will get black. However, none of colors we have are very pure. All blues and yellows we get have green in it. When they are mixed together, the blue and yellow cancel out and green light gets reflected. So we see green. The term “purity” here is vague. To be more precise I should use “spectral bandwidth”. The nearer the bandwidth is, the purer the color is. In my optics lab, I have something called “interference filters”. The blue filter allows narrow band blue light goes through, and yellow one transmits narrow band yellow. When I stack a blue filter on top of a yellow filter, I see no light goes through, or I can say I see black.
I don’t want to be too left-brain-ish. Let’s talk about painting. The painting I post today emphasizes on the subtlety of the grays. I used to get my grays by testing randomly. After I did my color wheel study, I have gained more sensitivity on grays, and I can obtain my grays more systematically. I like David Leffel’s paintings. He is the expert of grays.
8 comments:
Simply beautiful!
Bonita pintura!!!
Mis felicitaciones.
Wonderful grays, and a very painterly quality. Gorgeous!
Very nice grays!
What a beauty! I love the soft edges all over. Gives it an ethereal quality!
It's lovely. I read an earlier post where you mentioned "fighting the background" to paint... Do you always paint background first?? And if so why? Please do not feel obligated to answer these questions. Maybe if you could bring up this subject in a future post, if it's convenient. I don't want to impose.
Your paintings are all beautiful. And your informations about lighting are very helpful, even though I have not tried it yet. I guess, because you are both scientist and artist, that makes you a great artist. I admire your brain both the left and the right, sir. :D
Ummm... There's something about your theory that I would like to ask. Did you mean that we cannot find the pure blue and yellow in natural pigment but we can find it pure in spectrum? So the blue pigment has a little yellow and the yellow pigment has a little blue in it. So they show the exceeded color which is green. I would be numb, if I mix the blue with yellow and find it black. It's great this way.....My little peanut-sized brain is getting confused by my own analysis. Good night to Beijing, sir.
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