Seeing Like an Artist - GREEN

I was on a bus heading to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, when I looked out the window to see a breathtaking sunset.  I can still see it. The pinkish grey Andes were covered with snow.  Voluptuous pink and peach colored clouds were caught on the peaks, and above those, puffy cumulus ones - in all the tones of grey, billowing like cotton candy against a turquoise sky. Spectacular! Fascinated by the colors and nature´s beauty, almost hypnotized, I looked at my traveling partner and said, "Ginny, look at the sunset!"
She responded, " Oh yea, it looks like it's going to rain," and  returned flipping the pages in a magazine on her lap. I thought, "Thank you, God, for my eyes that see the beauty of nature."

What a privilege it is to be an artist. I´d like give you some insights to seeing color like artists see color.

Let´s talk about temperature. Let´s start with green. Many people think, "Green is green", but that´s not so. Colors have temperature! There are warm green and cool greens. Look for yellow in the green to find the warm ones. Blue shades will indicate the cool ones. It is easy to see this in the samples here! A. has yellow in it, while B. has blue.

If  we observe a terrain whose vegetation is identical, we find the grass closer to us has a yellow cast while the grass further away has a bluer cast. Why? This is because curtains of atmosphere cool the color ( I´ll talk more about that in another blog).

Now,  observe the leaves of a tree. Notice that when the sun is behind the leaves, the green is yellowish and the leaves becomes almost transparent. See that same leaf with the sun coming down at a different angle.  The leaves are darker, cooler and opaque. So the leaves in the same tree, at the same time, show both warm and cool greens, depending upon how the sun catches the leaves.

The artist who paints landscapes has to create 3-dimensions on a flat surface. She relies on her sense of color to do this. She will use her knowledge of color temperature to create an optical illusion of depth.   Warm colors will bring her subject close to the viewer, while cool colors create the illusion of distance.

Don´t take my word for it. Observe the green around you and in paintings for now. We´ll look at other colors soon!

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