I don't know if you have noticed, when I do low key (i.e. dark background) paintings, I hardly use any cool colors with high chroma at my center of focus. I feel it does not look colorful when a cool color object against a dark background, it looks more black-&-white to me. Imagine a lime with a black drape in the back. I feel the lime look pale. However, if I put an orange against the black, it looks much more colorful. In contrast, I did a high key painting today. I used a blank canvas as the background and high chroma blue color for my center of focus. You know what, I feel the blue showing beautifully, much better when using a dark background. From all above observations, can I generalize and say: warm colors show better with dark background, and cool colors show better with lighter background? Is there any aesthetic relationship between hue and value? Pardon me for being so ignorant, I have not heard anybody's comment about the value and hue are not independent if you want to form an appealing color design. If you know someone has documented this relationship please let me know.
Delicate and so special!
ReplyDeleteI would tend to agree with your statement. Blues lose saturation as you lighten them with white to raise their value (to pop off the dark background). Blues are most intense in their natural dark state, right out of the tube. Yellows are at their most intense in their inherent light value. Yellow-greens and blue-greens fall into that middle ground... which I guess goes without saying. Anyway, so yeah, I believe your statement is correct, but I hadn't thought that through before.
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ReplyDeleteYour observation certainly makes sense to me. Like Connie, I hadn't though it through either. I like the simplicity of this still life. It is quite peaceful.
I think about this topic quite often, as I teach warm/cool paradigm v. light/dark paradigm. The cooler colors are definitely "darker" in value the closer you move toward blue. A gray-scale copy of a color wheel clearly demonstrates that. But I also believe there is a visual response of "brighter" when moving toward the warmer color of red, even though it appears fairly dark on the gray-scale.
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