“Landscape Painter’s Workbook” Preview: Color Strategies with Carol Strock Wasson and David Mensing

This is the final installment of a 3-part series highlighting some of the painters featured in my new book, The Landscape Painter’s Workbook: Essential Studies in Shape, Composition, and Color.

Also see these previews:

THE LANDSCAPE PAINTER’S WORKBOOK:
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The Landscape Painter’s Workbook devotes four chapters to color: Precepts and Paradoxes, The Complete Color Strategy, Color Grouping, and Palette Strategies. Central to all four chapters is this idea: while we may borrow nature’s hues, her value relationship and temperatures, that is only a starting point. Inevitably, we discover that to achieve the effects we are after, we also have to modify colors in an informed way. We need to apply some kind of overarching plan to our color—a color strategy.

A color strategy is like a formula for color interactions, a collection of particular colors, interacting in specific ways, to convey a mood, a time of day, or a particular color of light.

The “Complete” Color Strategy

When painters refer to “color strategies,” they are usually referring to the color relationships found on the standard 12-step color wheel: analogous, complementary, split-complementary, etc. More precisely, these relationships refer to hue interactions. They define the ways different hue families interact with one another. Do the colors contrast with one another, as in complementary or triadic? Or are they bound together through similarity, as in analogous? As important as hue interactions are, a complete color strategy also involves two other essential aspects of color — relative value contrast and saturation levels.

Hue, value, and saturation will be familiar to most painters, as they are the very same characteristics we use to describe individual colors. In the “complete” color strategy, however, these three characteristics are seen globally, acting on the entire painting simultaneously. The Complete Color Strategy chapter reviews each of these aspects of color in depth. Then, each painting in the chapter are thoroughly analyzed, along with a “key” that indicates the hue interaction, relative value contrast, and saturation levels.

Carol Strock Wasson

HOW VALUE AFFECTS COLOR IDENTITY

I am sometimes asked, What is the most important lesson on color the landscape painter needs to understand? My answer: how value affects color identity. It’s so important that I’ve discussed it, in varying ways, in my first book, in this new book, and several times on this blog.

The value of a color (how light or dark it is) has a direct effect on how well we can perceive the color as actual color.

In the 10-step value chart above, colors on the left are very light in value, nearly white. Colors on the right are very dark in value, nearly black. If you squint at the chart, the colors in the mid range (around 4 to 7) seem to hold more “color.” The colors on the flanks hold much less color identity, so they are less able to act as color. A color’s hue identity is most evident when its value is neither too dark nor too light, but when it is in the mid-value range.

Carol Strock Wasson, Spring Snow Melt, pastel on paper, 16″ x 20″, 40.5 x 51 cm

HUE INTERACTION: Differences, based on alternating temperatures
?VALUE CONTRAST: LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH
SATURATION: LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH

Spring Snow Melt has a light- and color-filled quality. This is, of course, partly because of the value contrasts, which tell us what is in light and what is in shadow. In this piece, however, the value contrasts are not strong. The tree on the right is the one place where we find some rich darks. But everywhere else, Carol keeps her values in the mid-range, which allows those colors to express more of their chromatic identity. “All my paintings are based initially on a color plan or harmony based on the color wheel,” Carol explains. “But I also take into account the value of each color I use. In my mind, color and value are interrelated, and both must be considered, especially when a painting is based more on color contrasts than value contrasts.”

It’s worth noting that as “colorful” as the painting appears, Carol is not using her colors at full saturation. Fully saturated colors are extremely potent, and if not used sparingly, can overpower a painting.

See more of Carol’s work at her website: carolstrockwasson.com

David Mensing

SATURATED COLOR COMBINED WITH RICH DARKS

David Mensing, Salutarious, oil, 16″ x 12″, 40.5 x 30.5 cm

HUE INTERACTION: ANALOGOUS, red-violet
VALUE CONTRAST: LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH
SATURATION: LOW / MEDIUM – HIGH

David Mensing takes a different, but equally clever approach to suggesting light. Instead of keeping the values of his colors in the mid range, he is not shy about creating strong value contrasts. However, he places the rich darks against an area of very saturated color, which accentuates the brilliance of the saturated red that much more. This approach gives him strong lights and darks to foster an illusion of brilliant light, and saturated colors to make that light sing.

See more of David’s work at his website: davidmensingfineart.com

THE LANDSCAPE PAINTER’S WORKBOOK:
Pre-order now