Imaginative Color & a question from a student

I got this great question today in my CHROMA Community group on Facebook.

I thought you might find the answer interesting.  Let's start by defining a literal color palette. Painting using a literal color palette of your subject, in its natural light conditions, whether it’s live or in a photo, is called the local color of an object. Local color is important for those painters striving for realism.  It gets fuzzy when you consider that a still life set up may include spot lighting to enhance the lights and shadows. Is that local color? Not in the truest sense of the word, but the end result of the painting may very well still be considered very realistic.

I like to paint with more of an impressionistic sense of color.  I try to look very carefully at a color shape and notice its color leanings.  For example, does the “red” shape in my subject lean toward a cooler magenta color? Or possibly toward a warmer orange? Does it have any white, making it a lighter value? Pink or peach?  Does it lean toward gray where it may have some green in it?  I love color and love exposing and sometimes exaggerating the leanings of it. 

As the artist, we have the power and privilege of doing that. We can also change the color altogether, which calls into play another element: value.  If we know the value of a shape, we can make it any color we want (if it’s the same value as the subject) and still have it read as a true representation of what it is.This is how I can get away with painting a pink cow.

By learning about the elements of art, the properties of the colors we choose, how they relate together, along with how to expertly identify the proper values in your subject, you can have an abundance of imaginative color options before you.  My Essential Elements course is a great place to start to unravel the mystery.