Category: Eugène Delacroix

Color Scales- A Concentration on Greens

Judith Reeve, River Repose, 9 x 12, oil on board.

During my summer painting excursions, I meditated on ways to achieve a variety of greens in the landscape. Summers along the East Coast are bathed in lush greenery, including trees, foliage, grasses, and lawns; sometimes, even the sky appears with a hint of green. I desired to create a greater range in my greens in terms of value, intensity, and color temperature. I was also seeking some deep, warm greens that could form the foundation on which to add yellow greens on top. I found that experimenting with a color’s scale opened my mind to a larger range of possible tones.

A color scale describes the movement of one color, such as yellow, moving towards its complement, violet. This movement must pass through a muted yellow to a chromatic gray (yellow) through the neutral, emerging into the violet scale, which rises in intensity from a chromatic gray (violet) to a muted violet, ending in a prismatic violet. There are several ways to create this scale. The most common way to create this movement within a scale is to add the complementary color to the tone. I can add a small amount of red to my green to manipulate its tone and reduce its intensity. But I want to focus on an alternative way the movement from green to red can be achieved.

This summer I experimented with the green scale by adding varying amounts of the green hue [this term hue, I am using as Robert Henri used it. Hue refers to a neutralized tone that still maintains the color character of the root color]. Henri observed that a color’s scale can be derived by mixing a combination of colors along the full spectrum of 12 intervals. I can mix a muted yellow by combining OY + YG; I could mix a yellow chromatic gray by combining G + O. Observe that in each combination, a small amount of violet is present. This violet reduces the intensity of the yellow in a precise manner. I am not adding increments of violet haphazardly. The correct amount of violet is already prescribed within the full spectrum.

In order to create a green hue I need to mix a yellow chromatic gray with a blue chromatic gray. The equation is:

Yellow hue [O + G] + Blue hue [G + V] = Green hue

Note that the red is present in the O and the V. Therefore, this red neutralizes the green in the mixture. What is lovely about this green hue is its richness. It is deep, dark, and warm with a tinge of orange. It became an excellent base on which to place my lighter, more intense, prismatic greens and yellow greens.

Here are my YG, G, R, and O scales. By creating several scales, I can mix between them with ease to achieve the exact tone I am looking for. Note in the YG and O scales, I have used a combination of colors, not strictly adhering to the exact complement. The practical goal was to generate a reduction in intensity while still maintaining the character of the root color. Henri did the same thing.

Note the tones in the red scale as it moves towards the green. The green scale and the red scale should be connected by the neutral that creates a transition between complementary scales. The scale would therefore be continuous, moving from prismatic green through the neutral, rising up to prismatic red. I placed mine as above so I could view the related intervals side by side.

The green scale and its half-complements, OY and BP [the green at the same intensity level has been added to both the YG and the BP scales]. One can observe the possible interrelatedness of the tones because the half-complements, in this case, contain the green scale. Look how dynamic the color, BP + G, looks next to the green scale. My range of tones has been vastly increased.

I also experimented with the half-complements of green, OY, and BP [which are themselves complementary]. Note that I have mixed green into the half-complements, ensuring a gradual descent in intensity within each scale. Again, note that at each interval on the BP and OY scales, I added the corresponding tone on the green scale. This greatly expands the possible greens available to the painter.

This is the YG scale down the middle, bordered by its half-complements, O and B, which are themselves complementary. Half-complements are 3 intervals from the root color. Complements are 6 intervals from the root color. Note, I have reduced the YG scale with P as Henri had done.

In the YG scale, I explore the lighter values and yellower tones for green. Mixing the YG with the B creates cooler tones. Mixing the YG with the O creates warmer tones that are more neutralized because they contain an increment of red in the combinations.

Here is the GB scale bordered by the half-complements, Y and P, which are themselves complementary.

Note all the amazing, cool greens that result from this combination of the GB and the P, as well as the slightly warmer tones of GB and Y. Again, this vastly expands my options for greens.

Remember that the color scales are continuous, traveling from the root color to its complement through the neutral. By varying the tones within a color’s scale by adding increments of the hue [chromatic gray], I can create a feeling of depth in the color and an inherent sense of color movement. Note that muted tones, chromatic grays, and the neutral are fundamental to harmonizing color in a composition. These less intense tones act as a foil to the prismatic colors, thereby intensifying them through simultaneous contrast. I can create color echoes within the composition by playing along a color’s scale. Delacroix’s concept of gradation follows a similar idea. If there is an area on the canvas that is, say, green, I can add variations of the green scale to achieve variety within that unified mass. These closely related tones in value and hue are overlaid or laid side by side to achieve a vibrant surface effect. This maintains the integrity of the mass but optically brings it to life.

Whether the notes along a color’s scale help me to harmonize my composition through echoes of related tones, or visually add vibrations along the surface of the canvas, or activate simultaneous contrast between chromatic grays and prismatic colors, I have greatly expanded my understanding of color’s visual properties. This can only enhance my ability to create a beautiful, enticing surface on my canvas, enriching the viewer’s experience and my own.

Pigment Notes:

  • Yellow- Schevington yellow lemon [Monoazo yellow, OH] + Raw sienna
  • Blue- Indanthrene blue [W&N]
  • Red- Green scale ending in red- Persian red (synthetic iron oxide) [Williamsburg]
  • BP, P- Cad. red med. [OH] + PR264 (Permanent Madder Deep) [Rembrandt] + Indanthrene blue
  • All other full spectrum colors [of 12 intervals] are mixed from the above pigments

Note: In my book, The Color Investigations of Robert Henri, I present an in-depth study of color scales in the chapter, The Intensity Palettes of the Winter’s Group. Available shortly. Be sure to subscribe so I can keep you updated on the release date!

The Beginning, Part 2

Judith Reeve, “Undertow,” Lithograph published initially with this essay, AziMuth, Spring 2000.

As I reflect on the beginning of my artistic journey and the evolution of my blog, I am often reminded that beginnings often express all our longings for what ought to be and, in many ways, summarize all that may proceed. Below is an article I wrote for the journal AziMuth. AziMuth was a collaborative effort by a group of artists, all at the early stages of their development. It was a pleasure to work with all of them, mining an artistic vision that had yet to fully emerge.

Language of the Artistic Journey

[Originally published in AziMuth, a journal of the arts, Spring, 2000]

“There is a splendid land, a land of Cockaigne, they say, that I dream of visiting with an old love.  A unique land drowned in our Northern fogs, that might be called the Orient of the West, the China of Europe, where heated and capricious fantasy is given such free rein and has so patiently and persistently adorned it with its learned and luxuriant vegetation.”

(Invitation to the Voyage, Charles Baudelaire, trans. Cosman, Little Brown and Co.)

The beginning of any pursuit must inevitably start with an invitation, whether it be an outward or inward call to action.  Charles Baudelaire describes the artistic journey of the poet/painter as an Invitation to a Voyage, a voyage embarked upon by what he calls correspondence.  Correspondence identifies the relationship between the artist and his subject in the natural world and its mirrored relationship in the imagination.  This deep feeling of connectedness evoked by the subject spawns in the artist a journey into the imaginal world. It is here a dialogue takes place in archetypal terms between the soul of the artist and the corresponding image of the subject.

This journey could be described as a quest in all its fullness.  It is a sort of search for a “holy grail” or the “alchemical gold,” one in which the artist is transformed as much as he is transforming his subject.  It is a call to “know thyself.”  In Baudelaire’s prose poem, An Invitation to a Voyage, he describes this imaginal world in terms of its transformative powers.  It is a place where,

“The treasures of the world flow…It is a unique land, superior to others, as art is to nature, where Nature is refashioned by the dream, where it is corrected, recast.”

But what is to be gained on this quest in this “unique land?”  Baudelaire states in An Invitation,

“I have found my Black Tulip and my Blue Dahlia.  Incomparable flower, rediscovered tulip, allegorical dahlia, it is there, is it not, in this lovely land so quiet and so dreamy that we should go to live and flower?”

(Invitation to the Voyage) 

It appears that the rediscovered tulip is the longed for creative impulse, the vital need for inspiration, for a “spark.”  And it also appears that the blue dahlia becomes the “poetic Image,” the elusive object sought after in the imagination.  These two aspects, the creative impulse and the poetic image, have an internal dialogue within the imagination, providing the artist with the energy and material for the poem/painting.

The artist returns from this world, this journey, enriched, inspired by the image, which is a token of authentic contact. An “event” has taken place within the soul.  This event, this powerful experience, calls for a language appropriate to the scale and geography of the imagination.  One cannot bring back the experience itself; it has already passed. One can only bring back an equivalent, an analogy for what has taken place.  Analogy, therefore, becomes the appropriate language of the artist.  There is no other way to communicate—the French 19th-century writer, René Daumal, has directly titled his last novel Mount Analogue, reflecting this theme.  Early 20th-century American photographer Alfred Stiegeltz titled his lifetime work on cloud formations, Equivalents.  And in regard to painting, Eugene Delacroix, in his journal, puts it this way:

“The figures and objects in a picture, which to one part of your intelligence seem to be actual things themselves, are like a solid bridge to support your imagination as it probes the deep mysterious emotions of which the forms are, so to speak, the hieroglyph…”

(Journal, Delacroix, Phaidon, 1995)

Analogy becomes the language or symbol (symbol in terms of visual imagery) whereby the artist can create the poem/painting.  Characteristically, the analogy is independent. It becomes the work itself.  It retains a vitality beyond the confines of the creator.  Because of this independent life of the symbol, the work can be accessed by all.  Analogically, there is a repetition of the original journey of the artist, whereby the work becomes the subject in the natural world, allowing the viewer/reader to find their own correspondence.  Through analogy, we can travel to someplace- Mount Analogue or Cockaigne– in the imaginal world. Although this journey has signposts of the artists’ original voyage, everyone must travel inevitably by a different road.  The corresponding event, the search for the “Blue Dahlia,” or the “Alchemical Gold,” will be individual and personal.  The artist allows for this possibility by leaving a lacuna, described by Baudelaire as a gap, an incompleteness in the artistic work, to allow a place of entry for the imagination. 

Tied up with all of this is the artist’s own nostalgia for a revisiting.  The poet/painter takes on the role of the viewer/reader in this case.  The independence of the analogy takes on another character in the artistic journey of the poet/painter.  Therefore, for the artist as well as for the viewer, all “great work,” the “treasures of the world,” become mine.  They are mine personally, as well as collectively.  I possess them all and am able to dialogue analogically with all the artists, past and present, as well as travel to all those “unique lands,”  allowing myself to be personally transformed by each and every work.

“Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.  They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood.  Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.”

(The Art Spirit, Robert Henri, Harper and Row, 1923)