“Here is one of the best ways in the world to obtain brilliancy of color: Keep your color most intense on the edges of the lighted areas, where it merges into shadow. This seems to cast an aura of additional color over the whole area. Just taking a local color of the light and rubbing it into a darker color of the shadow (which most of us do, most of the time) produces no brilliancy. It is apt to be just color in the light, then mud, then reduced color in the shadow. This is one of the least known and least practiced truths."

This also is one of the best and most useful pieces of advice I’ve ever received.

You can get good color in a picture as long as the tonal values are correct. Good pictorial color does not have to represent literal fact. If the value and tonal relationships are right, the color won’t look bad. It is poorly chosen values and tonal relationships that spoil more color than anything else.

	Pictures which are built on a few basic values---a light, one or two middle tones, and a dark---seldom go dead.
	Large amounts of pure, bright colors won’t produce brilliant pictures. A patchwork of colors and values placed against each other, compete for attention and the brilliancy of the whole picture becomes reduced.
	One primary plus its neighbors, opposed by its complementary will never go dead. These colors, supported by neutral and semi-neutral colors, plus black and white, will always be brilliant...always.
	Mix your colors from as few colors as possible. Every color added to a mixture reduces its brilliancy.
	Large areas of color should be toned down with a complement or grey, in order to give other colors a chance. Remember the axiom, “The larger the area, the softer the color needs to be.”
	Here’s an interesting fact: the size of a picture effects our perception of its color harmony. Bright colors can be quite pleasant when used in a small color sketch, but when we use the same colors in the enlarged version, the colors appear coarse. The reason lies in the limited number of color cones in our retina. Because we have only so many color cones to register the different color vibrations, our eye tires quickly when scanning large areas of color. The illustrator whose pictures are photographically reduced for reproduction should understand and exploit this phenomenon.

A common cause of dead pictures is too much raw unrelated color rather than not enough. Here are some ways to bring your picture back from the dead.

	Trying greying all but two colors.
	Tie your palette together by mixing a single color into all but one or two of the other colors.
	Create your pictures with simple tone plans consisting of a light tone, one or two middle tones, and a dark tone. Keep it simple.
	Reduce your palette to three or four basic colors from which you’ll mix all the rest. This is a lot easier and more effective than it sounds.
	Don’t put bright colors into your shadows.
	Put your brightest colors into areas of light, especially transitional areas where light meets shadow.
	Never use all three primaries in their pure state, in the same picture. If they are there, that’s your source of trouble. Tone two of the primaries with the third one. Only one primary should dominate.
	Introducing black, white or grey can help restore the brilliancy of a picture which is too full of color. You have to sacrifice color in one place to gain brilliancy elsewhere.
	If the picture doesn’t respond to any of the above, it means that the values are wrong. The overall relationship of light to shadow has gone wrong. A color cannot be right until its value is right.

I know that much of this goes against what you think comprises good color, but these aren’t my rules...these are nature’s rules. Stick your head out of the window. What do you see? If your studio is in the city, you’ll likely see a lot of greys and dull browns. But if your studio is in the country, you’ll still be looking at lots of greys and browns. Most of the permanent things in the landscape; earth, tree trunks and rocks are greyed down colors. Except on golf greens, most grassy areas are greyed or brownish greens. The bright colors are reserved for rare and fleeting effects; flowers, sunsets, fruits, feathers and the spectacular colors of autumn. Those bright colors always appear to be at their maximum brilliance because they are surrounded and buffered by neutralized tonalities of themselves. Perhaps there’s an important lesson waiting on your next walk through the fields.


Light and Shadow

Outdoor light comes from the sun, not the sky. That’s why sunlit highlights are warm, especially as we approach sunset. The blue of the sky reflects into the shadows causing shadows to appear cooler than the lights.

In a studio with a north-facing window, the opposite is true. Because there is never any direct warm light from the sun, the blue of the sky reflects its cool light through the window. Because of optical contrast, the shadows appear warm. Like the pictures of John Sargent, your pictures will become lively and lifelike if you remember to create a warm/cool interplay between, and within, your shadows and your lights.

Shadows are affected by more than just the warm or cool reflections of the light source, thus we have the axiom, color is relative to all surrounding influences. What this means is, the areas of a warm yellow cube illuminated by a warm light source will get warmer and more intense, while the color on the cool shadow side will become neutralized. If we place the cube on a blue ground, that color will be reflected up into the shadow. Some of the blue would mix with the yellow causing the shadow to look greener than the above example. We call the actual color of an object its “local” color. Yellow is the local color of the cubes used in our example. This brings us to yet another axiom; local color should never completely lose its identity in the shadow. All colors are modified by the conditions surrounding them. Warm light shining on a warm color will give it greater brilliancy. The same warm light shining on a cool color will subtract brilliancy.

	When struck by light, all colors become a source of reflected light and will reflect
	All colors in shadow take on the reflected colors of the adjacent lightstruck area.
	Any two colors become harmonious when one (or both) are mixed with some of the other.
	No color can be more intense in shadow than it is in light.
	Colors at their greatest intensity should be relegated to the lights and halftones. In shadow, these colors should be greyed or neutralized---or changed by the influence of the adjacent colors.
	“The most brilliant colors are usually found in the halftones.”

Although the painter’s axiom of “greys make the picture” has much to recommend it, too many neutral greys can deaden a picture. Overly neutralized greys can be fixed by “spiking” them with the color they lean toward. Although this technique is particularly effective in the halftones, shadow colors can also be intensified to good effect. However, to avoid a gaudy and unconvincing picture, greater delicacy and taste must be used when spiking shadows.

Colors which are direct complements, meaning they appear directly opposite each other on the color wheel, will usually neutralize each other if mixed together. The neutral and semineutral tones made by mixing direct complements are called visual greys. One of the best known combinations is Alizarin Crimson and Viridian.

Learning to mix and use visual greys is one of the most useful skills a colorist can develop. I spent more than a year painting with nothing other than mixtures of Ultramarine and Raw Sienna. I never exhausted the possibilities offered by those two colors. Painting with such a limited palette gave me a greater appreciation of color. Again, this is something which must be experienced firsthand. Pick two complementary colors and execute a painting. Although you may use a full range of values, you’ll probably not use the full range of color. This exercise is a real eye-opener. I recommend it.