Background Binds (What to Do?)

"Mondo" with photo reference

I recently had an inquiry from a friend about what do do with backgrounds.

Hi Rita, 
I just discovered your art recently and I love the colors and the expressions of your animals, just beautiful. I am struggling to learn to paint in pastels myself, and deciding when to use which color is especially difficult for me. I was wondering how you determine which colors to use in your backgrounds for your animal portraits, do you have any tips?


Color is a complicated question, and one that I've learned is answered best by "value and temperature." I recently wrote an article on my Art Journal Blog about this, see here: http://ritakirkmanjournal.blogspot.com/2014/11/value-and-temperature-or-how-do-i.html

Backgrounds can sometimes present the greatest challenge in a painting. Especially when the painting is of a recognizable subject that holds its own as a center of interest and is easy enough to paint using a reference. But what about when your subject is surrounded by other objects that you don't want to include?

Sometimes, in my reference photo, I find that the background is perfectly lovely and I want to paint it exactly how I see it (..This doesn't happen very often!!) Usually, I have to use artistic license:

"Azul" with photo reference

I usually ask myself when I'm building up my under painting, "Do I want this subject to stand out boldly from the background, or do I want it to harmonize subtly with the background and the painting as a whole?"

If I want to be bold I use contrasting values. (dark behind the light parts and light behind the dark parts.)

"Bianca" and "Inky"

If I want to be subtle and harmonious (a more recent goal of mine,) I try for analogous colors and very close values from subject to background:

"Paella" and "Mr. Frost"

And usually, my subjects are outdoors, so in what I call my simple "default" background, I habitually use the standard laws of atmospheric perspective, and use cooler (and sometimes lighter and/or more neutral) colors in the far background, and warmer landscape colors in the closer background:


I've also gotten into the habit of keeping the backgrounds "fuzzy", meaning no crisp edges anywhere in the background. This helps with the feeling of  a soft focus that sets off the subject by contrast, and remains "farther away."

As a last point,always try to use some of the same colors in your background as in your subject. This will help assure color harmony, no matter which other value contrasts you're aiming for.

After a while, you'll learn how to completely ignore what's in your image background, and create a background that will best support your star subject!

(Personally, larger compositions have tended to give me the most background troubles. If you'd like to read more about my struggles with backgrounds, here's a perfect example from a while back. I wrote about "Leader of the Pack", in two posts:
http://ritakirkman.blogspot.com/2010/08/newest-cow-painting-progression-photos.html
and
http://ritakirkman.blogspot.com/2010/10/leader-of-pack-finally-really-finished.html)

"Leader of the Pack" (2010, pastel, 32x32 inches) first finish and final finish

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear from you if you found this helpful!

 .

Value and Temperature (Or How Do I Choose My Colors?)

       I've recently had a few inquiries about how I use color or how I choose my colors in my paintings. This might seem like a simple question, but the simplest sounding questions are often the most complex. Here's one of the first inquiries I had on this topic:

Hi Rita, I am looking forward to your demo for PSST in. January. Can you tell me what you plan to cover in the mini-workshop and at what level? I don't need a basic course but would be interested in leaning more about how you use color in your work. Thanks so much! Kathy

Hi Kathy,

Thanks for asking! I tailor my workshops to whoever is there, from beginner to advanced. In my 30+ years of using pastel, I've learned just about all the technical ins and outs. I teach best with demos, where I explain what I'm doing as I do it (usually) and then answer questions throughout the rest of the workshop and one-on-one advice.

I can give you a head-start tip on "color" by saying that I've gotten so good (in others' opinions) with color by not thinking in terms of color (hue), but of value and temperature. "Value is more important than color" is one of my mantras that I learned from several other experienced artists, and I like to add "...and temperature" (cooler or warmer) because really, if you have the value and the temperature correct in all areas of your painting, the whole thing will work regardless of color. Even if you only have value correct it will work, but with temperature I'm able to achieve that feeling of intense warm light in my current work. (I was gratified to hear in a recent workshop I took from Clayton Beck III, that he's a strong proponent of 'value and temperature' in his work and in his teaching!)

"Is This Seat Taken?" in grayscale (value scale)

 

"Is This Seat Taken?"

 But in contrast to that, my more recent workshop with Casey Klahn taught me that it's ok for color to have nothing to do with value or temperature, but to love color for it's own sake. Although I believe he has an innate master's grasp of value, he seems to put more emphasis on the playful and instinctual use of color, and his work accentuates intensity vs. neutrality, plus an amazing compositional genius!

(Can you tell I love learning too! ;)

Well, sorry for the long response. Look forward to meeting you in January!

Rita

 

To add to that, It has taken me the last twelve years of conscious effort improving my artwork (beyond the ordinary effort of copying someone's photo of their grandkids) to understand the importance of value and temperature on the effect of light and color. Honestly it's only been the last five years or so that I've even been aware of this relationship enough to use it and enhance these effects in my work.

To put it in basic terms, "Value" means the relative lightness or darkness of a color. "Temperature" means how warm or cool the color is. For example, the warm colors are red and yellow (think 'fire' and 'sun') so the warmest color really is orange (red and yellow combined.) The coolest color (think ice, or arctic water) is blue. All the colors between these are what I call 'neutral', for lack of a better term for a color that is in between warm and cool. 

Picture a color wheel:

You see that orange and blue are compliments (meaning they are on opposite sides of the wheel.) All the colors closer to the orange are warmer, and all the colors closer to the blue are cooler. Blue-green is cooler than yellow-green. Red-orange is warmer than red-violet. Etc.

This gets more vague as the colors get in to true neutrals (greyed colors) meaning colors that have been toned down with their compliment (Aak! I can't even find a decent color wheel online that shows this!) but if you remember that any color that is a green or a violet is going to be cooler than any reds or yellows, and warmer than any blues. THIS is why I LOVE greens and violets! They are SO beautiful in shadows, where there's reflected warm light shining into cool shadow colors. They can be warm (compared to cooler blues) or cool (compared to warmer reds or yellows.)

Having worked so long with subjects that are in sunlight, I'm used to working with the "warm light, cool shadows" precept. There is also the "cool light, warm shadows" scheme, which is prevalent among artist who prefer north light windows in studio work, or overcast, cloudy light outdoors, which will frequently be a cooler light. There's enough of that subject for another book, so I won't elaborate here! (One of my paintings "Marjoram" does illustrate this cool light/warm shadows concept pretty well) :

Reflected light, if you noticed the mention above, is another subject worth a long post of it's own!

Here's a pic of Maggie Price's pastel box, arranged by an x/y value/temerature scale. This is the photo I took to arrange my own box the same way

Notice the cool colors at the bottom and the warm colors towards the top.

Here's my own new studio set of Terry Ludwigs in my Mike Mahon box. I like my warm colors on the bottom and cool colors at the top. Violets and greens are in between, mixed up by how relatively cool or warm they are. If you see some that look out of place, it's because I organized this by value first, each row, then by temperature. Plus I have my Diane Townsend Terrage pastels in the seams of the foam inserts, and my Great American Artworks iridescents at the far right. For travel I use my Heilman box (like Maggie's) where I have my colors laying down flat and arranged a lot like hers!

Let me know if this helps you! :)

.