Local Color
Page 1
Published by
Princeton Architectural Press
37 East Seventh Street
New York, New York 10003
Visit our website at www.papress.com.
© 2015 Mimi Robinson
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the
context of reviews.
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.
Editors: Jennifer Lippert and Tom Cho
Designer: Mia Johnson
Author Photo: Yvonne O’Hare
Cover Design: Mia Johnson
Special thanks to: Meredith Baber, Sara Bader, Nicola Bednarek Brower, Janet Behning, Megan Carey, Carina Cha, Andrea Chlad, Barbara Darko, Benjamin English, Russell Fernandez, Will Foster, Jan Cigliano Hartman, Jan Haux, Diane Levinson, Katharine Myers, Jaime Nelson, Rob Shaeffer, Sara Stemen, Marielle Suba, Kaymar Thomas, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Janet Wong of Princeton Architectural Press
—Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robinson, Mimi.
Local Color : Seeing Place Through Watercolor : 14 Daily
Practices / Mimi Robinson.—First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61689-297-5 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-61689-440-5 (epub, mobi)
1. Watercolor painting—Technique. I. Title.
ND2130.R63 2015
751.42’2—dc23
2014039304
Acknowledgments
A special thanks to all of the people who helped bring this book into being: To my publisher, Princeton Architectural Press, for their vision; to Diane Chonette and Ann Hudner for their work on an earlier version of this book; to Steve Costa and Kate Levinson of Point Reyes Books, and Paloma Pavel, for their support and encouragement; to Kathy McNicolas and Kate Greene, who contributed color memories; to Robin Weiss for her superb eye; to Myn Ades for her masterful editing; and to Carla Robinson and Lily Reid for their help.
—Mimi Robinson
8 INTRODUCTION
10 CHAPTER ONE
Getting Grounded: My Backyard
28 CHAPTER TWO
Getting Started: Materials, Preparation & Techniques
36 CHAPTER THREE
Look Around You: Elements of Place
HABITAT · LIGHT · WEATHER · SEASONS
50 CHAPTER FOUR
World Color: Travel Journeys
88 CHAPTER FIVE
Wherever You Go: Field Studies
BIG PICTURE · DETAIL · SKY PATCH · TERRAIN · ROCKS · WATER · COLOR WALK · COLOR MEMORY · NAMING COLORS
108 CHAPTER SIX
Palettes to Painting: Some Places
118 CHAPTER SEVEN
Color Mixing: The Basics
HOW MANY GREENS ARE THERE?
126 FURTHER READING
INTRODUCTION
The color palettes I have created over the years have become a journal of my perceptions of place. Making them allows me to nurture a deep connection to the beauty of nature and the changing seasons as well as to local culture and history.
I have been greatly inspired by the artist Josef Albers’s work in revealing the interactions and relationships of color. What we see in any given place reveals its special spirit through its collection of colors. Bringing your attention to the colors of a place, whether in your backyard or the places you’ve traveled to, allows you to slow down and really see what’s in front of you.
I began making color palettes when I noticed that the color tests I made on scraps of paper, the process of trying to replicate the color of what I was observing, was an enjoyable and playful practice in itself. Throughout the years, I have used this visual form of journal keeping to document my interactions with color and locality. I also use this technique as a warm-up for when I go plein air painting (painting in the open air) to hone my perception of the colors before I use them to define a form.
Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor invites you to train your eye to create your own color palettes using basic materials and through simple practices in watercolors. Watercolors have a beauty and magic of their own. You can achieve instant results or spend a lifetime perfecting the craft. Watercolors are well suited for capturing an impression, and they’re portable. The tactile quality of holding the brush in your hand and mixing colors becomes another dimension of the experience.
The direct, hands-on practices I offer encourage you to open your eyes to things you may not have seen before and develop your color sense. Sharing my color journals from my own backyard and my travels around the world, I show how color palettes can capture the identity of a place. By introducing you to a few materials, techniques, and practices, I invite you to begin your own color explorations and collect a visual memory of your place in time.
CHAPTER ONE
Getting Grounded: My Backyard
Point Reyes National Seashore, on the western edge of the United States, is a place that is very close to my heart and a short drive from where I live in Northern California. I think of it as my backyard. Over the past two decades, I have studied the coastal landscape of Point Reyes, exploring the area in detail. Nurturing my relationship with this extraordinary natural environment animates me as an artist and continually guides my work.
LANDSCAPE
The environment of Point Reyes, informed by the power of the Pacific Ocean, holds a rich diversity of habitats: dense forests, wild beaches, windswept cliffs, coastal dunes, marshland, and open pastures, all within close proximity. By observing color, I have developed a deeper appreciation for the ecology, the local plant life, and the windswept trees, along with the animal and bird life.
OCEAN/SKY
There is an exquisite quality to the afternoon light at Point Reyes, when the sun passes behind the clouds and shifts the colors in an instant. It’s a reminder to me that everything changes. As I walk the muddy trails and coastal paths with wet feet and cold hands, Point Reyes awakens my senses.
Sunsets can be spectacular here, with the orange sun sinking into the Pacific Ocean. At dusk the ocean produces a light show of violet purples that change subtly and rapidly to orange, then red, and all shades in between. Waves catch the light, sand dunes glow, and grasses are illuminated like amber.
The beauty of the wild, frothy ocean stops me in my tracks, the salt spray flying and the colors of the beach changing in front of me. At other times, the in-between places of Point Reyes, the places I experience on my way to something else, inspire me the most. While driving one spring day, I saw big, fluffy, violet clouds low on the horizon. Suddenly the clouds opened in front of me and the sun came through, illuminating emerald green fields and mustard yellow meadows.
LIGHT
Light shifts throughout the days and the seasons. Early morning sunrises and evening sunsets, when the sun is low in the sky, typically create warmer colors, while high noon tends to yield cooler colors that are punctuated by stark shadows. In the winter, the light has a yellow quality. In April, there is a clear glow, ethereal in the morning, as the salt crystals from the ocean rise to meet the sky.
WILDFLOWERS
From January through August, depending on the mix of spring rain and sun, you can witness a show of wildflowers in Point Reyes.
The bright orange splashes of California poppies and deep purple of Douglas iris are always a vivid surprise.
Coastal lupines—yellow, purple, and white—line the walking trails through the meadows. My favorites are the lavender ones as they stand against the backdrop of the
ocean.
In a pasture of grass where cows graze off in the distance, the field appears to be all grass, but upon closer inspection, delicate little flowers are mixed in—worlds within worlds. They say that color can change your mood. Try sitting in a field of wildflowers in the spring and see how you feel.
FOG, MIST, AND HAZE
What is the color of fog? How do you capture the color of mist as it rolls in and out?
Fog and mist are made from tiny suspended water droplets, and they usually form at night, when the air is too cool to hold its humidity. Fog is considered a lowlying cloud that captures moisture as it rises from the ground. Mist is less dense and usually stays close to the ground.
Haze is composed of dust from the land and salt from the sea suspended in the air. It makes distant dark objects appear blue and distant white objects appear yellow. In coastal areas, salt crystals form in the air from the evaporation of wave droplets. These small, invisible crystals are largely responsible for the blue color in the atmosphere, and they are the reason the ocean sky is often bluer than the sky over land.
FOREST, LICHEN, AND MOSS
One of my favorite places in Point Reyes is a grove of coast live oak in a woodland forest on the eastern ridge. In the presence of the silent oaks, time slows, and my awareness of the unseen life of the forest around me increases. Fog lingers in the canopy. A squirrel takes a flying leap in search of acorns. Tree limbs weave together into arches. Lichen drips from the branches, and moss crawls up the trees. A vast network of roots stretches underneath the soil.
I observe the colors of the grove through dappled light—a mosaic of greens, silvers, and grays. A shaft of light illuminates a brilliant transparent green leaf. Lichens, mosses, and bark create an intricate patchwork of color and texture. An abundance of water in early spring makes sponge-like moss come alive with intense chartreuse and neon green. In late fall, the colors fade to ochre-tinged green and russet brown. It is an ever-changing, living palette.
THE COLORS OF POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE
CHAPTER TWO
Getting Started: Materials, Preparation & Techniques
A few essential materials and techniques are all you need to get started with watercolors and create color palettes. The quality of the papers, pigments, and brushes makes a big difference, so buy the best you can afford. Simple but high-quality materials can create wonderful results.
MATERIALS
Essential Equipment
• A pencil and pencil sharpener
• Kneaded or white eraser
• 0.5” and 0.75” flat brushes (inexpensive synthetic brushes are fine)
• Cold press 140 lb. watercolor paper (Arches or Winsor & Newton brands are good) or a bound watercolor journal
• Watercolor tubes (Winsor & Newton and Sennelier are good quality) or pans of 8 or 16 colors (Prang or the Winsor & Newton travel set are good). These are the color tubes I use:
* Permanent alizarin crimson
** Cadmium red light or medium
Permanent rose
* Ultramarine blue
** Pthalo (or Prussian) blue
Cobalt blue
Cerulean blue
Yellow ochre
* Lemon yellow
** Aurelian yellow
Burnt sienna
Burnt umber
To start with just a few colors, use Triad 1 (*) for a bright palette and Triad 2 (**) for a versatile palette (see chapter 7, Color Mixing).
• Portable drawing board
• Clips or tape for securing paper onto the board
• 2 small water jars with watertight lids: one for mixing, one for cleaning
• A portable watercolor palette for mixing colors (if using a paint box, you can mix on the inside of the cover)
• Paper towels
Optional Equipment
• Medium-size travel brushes with water reservoir in handle
• Size 8 round brush
• Bone folder
• Ruler
• Field stool
One 20” x 30” piece of watercolor paper can yield a variety of sizes to work with.
PREPARATION
Paper Size & Grid
I like to use a 5.5” x 7.5” sheet of paper when painting a color palette. A 20” x 30” piece of watercolor paper is a good place to start for a variety of paper sizes; fold it in half, creasing with a bone folder a few times, then tear. Keep folding and tearing until you have the sizes you want.
On one of the pieces, lightly pencil in a frame about a half-inch from the edge to leave room for notes, and draw a 12-box grid.
A grid allows you to create a replicable structure so you can compare palettes over time. Experiment with your own dimensions and grid.
Pigments & Color Theory
Whether you are working with tube or pan pigments, there are hundreds of colors to make by mixing paint. Start by painting swatches of all your colors so you know what you are working with.
From color theory we know that any three primary colors, a triad, can make many colors that will be harmonious. I work with a variety of triads—various blues, reds, and yellows—to achieve a larger range of bright and subdued colors. I sometimes use an even more limited palette of just two colors, but I’m also quick to bend the rules and experiment with other color mixes. Mixing color and water in different proportions can create thousands of colors. Different palettes are useful for different subjects and views.
The beauty of working with tubes is that you can customize your own palettes. I know painters who bring different sets of colors with them, depending on where they are traveling: for example, in the American Southwest where there are warm, subdued earth colors, or in India, with its riot of color.
TECHNIQUE
Brush Marks
Get to know your brushes and explore the marks they make. Hold the brush lightly; think of it as an extension of your hand. Use large brushes to encourage a sense of freedom. Whether a square or a line, thin or fat, blob, blip, or spatter, making marks is an expressive part of painting—your vocabulary. Marks contain energy: some are quick and gestural while others can be slow and detailed. Some marks are brimming with pigments while others hold only trace amounts of color. Use a lot of water and lots of pigment to explore a variety of marks.
Painting
Watercolors are both evocative and surprising. Embrace their dynamic and spontaneous nature, as they lend to painting quick impressions. Transparent layering and overlapping of colors can create a multitude of subtle effects.
Make sure your paintbrush is clean before you reach for another color (blot on a paper towel).
1. Flat (one-color) wash
Dip your brush in water, pick up some pigment, and lay it down on the page. For the next stroke, pick up more water and pigment and overlap the edge of the wet mark you have just painted. Tilt the paper as you apply the color. To overlap colors, apply a second pigment over the dry wash.
2. Graded wash
Start with a dark band of color. With each stroke, use more water to lighten the color as you go down the page.
3. Two-color graded wash
On damp paper, lay a band of color on one side and then a band of color on the other side, and let the colors run into one another in the middle.
4. Glazing
Apply a thin layer of color over a dry wash to produce a new color.
5. Wet on wet
Wet the paper with your brush, wait a moment, then drop in colors from a brush charged with concentrated paint.
CHAPTER THREE
Look Around You: Elements of Place
The practices in this book open the door to looking at color, engaging with it, and experimenting as you go. This is about a process. Have fun with these practices and jump in!
Here’s what I do in the field. I sit down and tune into my senses—sight, sound, touch. I may close my eyes, then open them again and take in the view, finding something I like. I look at one color and try to ma
tch it with paint, trying out color mixes on test paper. When I’m satisfied, I put that color down on my palette.
Focus on the elements of place: habitat, light, weather, and season. They will help ground you to wherever you are. They are all interconnected and influence one another in unique ways depending on the time of day or within a season.
Pick a color and try to match it. If the first mark doesn’t look quite right, keep mixing, making it warmer or cooler, darker or lighter, adjusting the color until you find what you want, then put that one down on the palette as well and move on to the next color you see. Once you’ve made your mark, resist the temptation to go over it and you’ll have cleaner colors.
Consider working on more than one color palette at a time. That way, the paint can dry on one while you shift your attention to another—perhaps another view or another set of colors from the same view.
A NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS
The photographs are here for reference, so you can see where my color palettes come from. I much prefer to work directly from nature. I sit and absorb a place. The color relationships between land, sky, water, weather conditions, quality of light, time of day, and the angle of the sun and shadows—all of these add up to fully experiencing your surroundings and being truthful to the moment.
HABITAT
Wherever you are—whether in a meadow or a city—you can observe and paint the colors of the local habitat. Habitat is just what you see around you: from sidewalk, floor, or path to buildings, trees, or mountains. The angle of the sun. The clouds in the sky. Each habitat is a collection of colors.
PRACTICE
• Bring your paints and find a comfortable place to sit. Take a moment and allow yourself to drop into this place. Close your eyes and open them—what colors do you see? Now look more closely. What are the colors beneath your feet? What are the colors at eye level? Overhead, do you see sky, tree branches, clouds, or the tops of high buildings? Notice the time of day and where the sun is in the sky. Can you see the moon? What is the season?
• Take your piece of paper and start with the color you see most of. What color sits next to that color? What color do you see traveling across a leaf or up the side of a building?