See more color in nature

  What color is the sky? What color is a tree trunk?
What if I said the sky contains a rainbow not just after a storm but always.  Or a tree trunk sometimes is violet or purple?

  Our eyes often see what our brain tells us to see.  We were taught a tree trunk is brown so
when many beginner artists begin to paint, they grab for brown paint. Yet, if you really see the colors of a tree trunk you would see how many colors are really there.

  One way to really see color is to isolate a spot to see what colors the item you are inspecting contain. One way to do so is to create a circle with your fingers like a telescope. Then put your fingers up to one eye and look through it to see the color of the particular object. Try to see the color of the object without identifying the object in your mind. Your mind doesn't jump to conclusions this way.  You begin to really see.  Over time, your ability will increase.

  Find something else around you that looks like the color that you believe the tree trunk is.  Compare the two. Maybe you will then see that the tree looks like it has purplish tones to it, maybe not depending on the tree.

  Still need assistance?  We know that colors in the sunlight have a tendency to be warmer (reds, oranges and yellow). Colors in the shadows are cooler (blue, purple and green).  Therefore if you look at the color in the sunlight on the tree first, you notice that it is not light brown (as our mind might say) but a beautiful warmer color. Does it lean toward red (or pink- white mixed with red) or yellow or orange?   I mixed up some white with a touch of orange  to paint the lightest lights on this tree trunk.

  Now that you know that the colors on the tree in the sunlight are warmer, the colors in the shadows are then cooler. So what color do you see the most when looking at the tree trunk in shadow areas? Does the color lean toward blue? Green? Or perhaps a purple? Or a combination? Practice comparing the colors of two objects. Which is warmer. Which is cooler.  Look at the base of the tree trunk in shadow and then higher branches or different types of tree trunks. Compare, compare, compare and you are training your eyes to see color.

  My advanced art training after college was as a tonalist from John Osborne at the Ridgewood Art Instititute and classes at the Art Student's League after winning a scholarship from the Pastel Society of America.  Much of my color training was when I  was a makeup artist. There I learned that any color can be made warmer or cooler. For example, grass in the sunlight needs to be a warmer green (a color that bends toward yellow).  The grass in shadow areas is cooler so add more blue to these greens to make them even cooler. In the painting of my tree above, you can see both warm and cool greens.  There are yellow greens in the sunny part of the grass on the distant shore and bluer greens in the shadow areas.

  While I come from generations of colorists and much of my color sense is intuitive, it is something that I got better at with practice and so can you. My grandfather was a painter and could mix color in a paint can to match a previous wall color. Today there is a computer to do this. Back then he used the same method I am sharing with you by isolating the color first to see what the base color leaned toward. Then he saw that it leaned toward warm or cool, and the degree of lightness or darkness.  He was amazing. He made his living as a house painter however, at an older age he took up oil painting until his arthritis stopped him.  My mom, his daughter, is a fabric artist and her color sense is fabulous. When she first began exhibhiting, a museum curator in Orlando asked her to show one of her pieces, a quilt that was simply stunning. She made wearable art as well.  I was able to teach her a process to make her own designs rather than relying on store bought patterns. Once she got the concept, she took off and won many awards for her colorful originals.  She was never afraid of color and using or wearing bright colors. My brother has become a photographer and his work has been published many times.

  With more practice you'll begin seeing colors where you never saw them before.  When I was young I moved to Florida. My memory was that New York was gray. Many of my first attempts at landscape painting as a teenager resulted in gray lifeless skies and buildings. It wasn't until after I moved to Florida (and my disposition internally improved) that I began to see color more vividly and use color more ituitively. Then when I moved back north I saw colors where I never saw color before. When I moved from painting portraits to painting landscapes it was similar to how in the movie of the Wizard of Oz it went from black and white to color when Dorothy landed in Oz.  I know for a fact that we all see color differently and it can change over time.  My student's comments after being taught to look for particular colors have verified this.  We really don't see half of what is in front of us yet alone the colors of these objects. If you want more advice and personalized assistance, take a workshop with a colorist. I would be happy to have you join one of my workshops. Here is the upcoming schedule for the summer. Click here.