The Secret to Painting the Right Color — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Let's play a little game.
2. 0:01This is called Pick That Color.
3. 0:03What color would you say this front square is in each of these pictures?
4. 0:07This part.
5. 0:09And you know that this is an optical illusion.
6. 0:11I have set you up for failure here because it's all the same color.
7. 0:15It's just this brown color that is, if I sample this here, it's this kind of
8. 0:22desaturated yellow color.
9. 0:24Now what's happening here is that your eye is playing tricks on you.
10. 0:27Color relativity is something that is really difficult to get because your eye
11. 0:31wants to tell you information.
12. 0:32I can look at this and say,
13. 0:33In this one he's wearing a green shirt.
14. 0:35In this one he's wearing a gold kind of shirt.
15. 0:37In this one he's wearing a red shirt.
16. 0:39But they're all exactly the same color.
17. 0:42Just the shadow part.
18. 0:43I did this intentionally to try to trick your brain to think in a blue situation
19. 0:49that color is going to look very orange.
20. 0:51In a green situation it's going to look very red.
21. 0:53And in a red situation it's going to look very green.
22. 0:56This is crazy.
23. 0:57How do we work with this?
24. 0:58How do we adjust ourselves to this?
25. 1:01This obviously is in the red zones.
26. 1:04All this stuff is in the red zones.
27. 1:05But if I was painting this, like I could get the color temperature.
28. 1:08I could shift from yellow to orange to red.
29. 1:11I get that.
30. 1:12But this green over here, that's green, right?
31. 1:14That is definitely green.
32. 1:15So if I select that,
33. 1:17Wait a minute.
34. 1:18Look over here.
35. 1:19When I selected that color, it's orange.
36. 1:22Wait, what?
37. 1:24This is orange too.
38. 1:25Everything that I picked that's green is actually orange.
39. 1:27This whole image, if I just kind of click and hold and move around it, it's all
40. 1:32reds and oranges.
41. 1:34All the way through.
42. 1:35The only time that I can get to actual colors that look like greens or blues is
43. 1:41if I come way up here into the sky and at some point it's gonna shift around
44. 1:46towards the blues.
45. 1:47It's so subtle, it's really grays.
46. 1:50This is clearly blue.
47. 1:51And yes, the water down here is blue, but this color here?
48. 1:54That's gotta be green.
49. 1:55Wait a minute.
50. 1:57It's yellow-orange again.
51. 1:58What?
52. 2:00This is a thing that happens with our eyes because it's over top of blue.
53. 2:05We mistake it for being more green than it really is.
54. 2:08How about this green up here?
55. 2:08That's definitely got to be green.
56. 2:10Like I could pick green as a color.
57. 2:13Nope, it's just yellow.
58. 2:15So any of this stuff is all in the yellow tones.
59. 2:19Now, if I were to look at this color here by itself, I would probably say it's
60. 2:23green, but if I look at it scientifically, this is more of a yellow.
61. 2:27All right, this image from the show Arcane, it's all these warm tones, lots
62. 2:33and lots of warm tones and warm light.
63. 2:35But clearly right up here, what color is this?
64. 2:39It's another warm tone, it's another yellow, but it is a desaturated yellow.
65. 2:44This is the power of gray, is that you can have a homogeneous color theme.
66. 2:50In art we would choose a limited palette to be able to make this very believable,
67. 2:55but to our eyes this looks blue to me, but when I select it, it's just gray.
68. 3:02But gray compared to all the other warm colors around it will feel blue.
69. 3:07This is a really tricky thing that will take a while to get used to so as you are
70. 3:10making these color studies give your best at trying to find the colors and then
71. 3:15we're going to try a new technique for how to pick those colors.
72. 3:19It's going to be very important if you go on to the intermediate class that I have
73. 3:23we will utilize this very heavily in being able to make very believable light
74. 3:27situations because light has limits.
75. 3:31Okay, let's follow this too.
76. 3:32You know it's going to trick you.
77. 3:34It's going to do the same thing to go, well, the greens are very yellow.
78. 3:38How about this tree?
79. 3:39The whole tree, that's got to be green, right?
80. 3:41Nope, it's still yellow.
81. 3:43Alright, this mountain in the background, that has to be blue.
82. 3:47No, it's still yellow.
83. 3:48In fact, everything on this image stays in that range if I just kind of click and
84. 3:53hold and move around.
85. 3:55Everything is in this range from orange to yellow and nothing else until I get
86. 4:03right here.
87. 4:04Right onto this back mountain, there is some purple in here.
88. 4:07And up here in the sky, well even up here in the sky, it's still, it's kind of
89. 4:11hopping around.
90. 4:12It's grays, but it makes a very beautiful combination.
91. 4:15They don't need those strong colors.
92. 4:17So, let's do a little bit of painting to show this.
93. 4:21There's this beautiful painting here called Early Morning by an artist called
94. 4:25Alexandra Jacob, or Jakob.
95. 4:27And I can see I'm going to do a quick little study here.
96. 4:30I started by finding colors of the sky and I can see a color temperature shift
97. 4:35from lighter desaturated yellow down into these oranges.
98. 4:39But if I look over here and say what color is this?
99. 4:41My eye wants to say that this color is
100. 4:45Purple.
101. 4:46So if I come and say it is a desaturated purple and start painting this, whoa,
102. 4:52that looks really purple.
103. 4:54Okay, how about over here?
104. 4:55This has got to be green.
105. 4:56So if I make this green and paint green up here, this just looks horrible.
106. 5:02So I'm going to undo, undo and try a new method here.
107. 5:06Because the light is ambient and soft and so much warmth in it, I'm going to go
108. 5:11ahead and pick and I hold down my option key while I'm on my brush and I'm going
109. 5:15to pick the color of the sky.
110. 5:17But instead of going towards what I think I see, I'm going to do the same thing
111. 5:22that I've observed in all of those photos.
112. 5:24I'm going to stay in the limited palette
113. 5:27And just kind of shift around the wheel a little bit.
114. 5:30I'm going to lean a little bit.
115. 5:32So I can say, alright, if I want something that looks purple, why don't I
116. 5:35desaturate and shift it a little bit more towards red and now paint.
117. 5:40Look at that.
118. 5:41This now looks like a purplish color because color relativity this looks
119. 5:48purple compared to all the orange around it.
120. 5:50Now let's say I want to shift and get these greens over here.
121. 5:54All I have to do is shift a little bit more towards yellow and now that feels
122. 5:59green and I can desaturate and darken this and look how green and minty this
123. 6:03feels even though it's still
124. 6:06In these warm tones it's because I've desaturated and I've limited my palette I
125. 6:12can pick these colors a little bit more accurately.
126. 6:16This is a yet again another thing that really improved my own artwork
127. 6:22dramatically as I was doing early studies once I started to realize what's actually
128. 6:27happening.
129. 6:27Try to look at this and understand color
130. 6:30temperature and color relativity and then if you get stuck go to the original
131. 6:35painting you go ahead and select this color look at that this color is not
132. 6:39green it's orange orange orange yellow orange yellow everything in here the
133. 6:45things that look purple are actually orange the things that look green are
134. 6:50are yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow orange yellow orange everywhere through
135. 6:55this painting even this green down in the bottom over here if I select this it's
136. 6:59yellow and it's on the orange side of yellow too it's just desaturated so to my
137. 7:04eye this looks like green well this the boat itself the shadow of the boat itself
138. 7:11actually does lean towards green so the green this thing I see in here but
139. 7:14Green down here, that's kind of an orangey yellow.
140. 7:17Alright, these two things are really important and really awesome to start to
141. 7:21observe in the world.
142. 7:23There's so much more we can learn about painting light.
143. 7:26In my course, Painting Light 101, we'll teach you all the basics you need to
144. 7:29paint anything you see
145. 7:31and how to observe light in the world around you.
146. 7:33There are over 40 lessons with assignments and bonus imagination
147. 7:37exercises.
148. 7:38I also have an advanced course for students who want to paint more from
149. 7:41their imagination.
150. 7:42Check all that out at proko.com/vickery