I’m working my way through Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing. For our third straight chapter on glazing, Dobie talks through a complex example of putting together a scene in the glazing method and offers some other glazing ideas.
Most of the chapter is another worked example painting of glazing. As before, Dobie begins with a yellow layer, but this time she preserves not only whites but other areas she does not want to have any yellow in them, such as areas that will eventually be violet or blue.
Once again the example has the now-draw-the-rest-of-the-owl problem I encountered in chapter 10, but more stages are shown. I also appreciate that the explanation addresses the issue I had previously flagged, that a full glazing-method painting requires you to preserve not just white but any area of pure color that’s not a mix with yellow (or whatever the current glaze color is).
More glazing ideas
Unusual color
Dobie points out that new, unusual colors are possible through glazing that may not be possible through direct mixing. She gives an example of students trying to mix the color of late sunlight hitting terra cotta shingles. Straightforward mixing created colors that were too orange and obvious, but through glazing they were able to approach a more complex and subtle color.
Glazing shadows
Instead of mixing two different colors for the light and shadow side of a building, Dobie suggests painting the entire thing in the local color, then in a future layer, glaze on the shadows with a complementary color.
She argues this will look more luminous, but I also like this tip because it sounds like it makes things easier! You know I love things to be easy.
Exercise
The worked example is supposed to be the big project here, but I’m sick of turning myself into a process printer to make a scene entirely from glazed single-color layers. It’s too hard to think that way, and it’s tedious. Instead, I’d like to zoom in on this idea of glazing shadows.
I decided to work out the exercise implied by this passage.
Many artists find that yellow is the most difficult color to deepen into shadow. Since yellow is a lightweight pigment, trying to mix it into a darker shade rarely works. The resulting mixture is usually brownish or has a greenish cast, but is never a true yellow. But look how easy glazing makes it. To gain a clean shadow… paint a strong yellow through both the light and dark areas. When dry, lightly glaze it with its complement (purple) and you’ll have a rich yellow glowing through the shadow.
Jeanne Dobie, Making Color Sing, ch. 12, p. 73
I decided to try this process, and compare with the non-glazing approach: directly mixing a shadow color for yellow.
My model was this backlit banana.
For the Mixing Method, I individually mixed colors for the yellow, the green-yellow near the top, and the shadow color. I used Azo Yellow for the yellow, Azo Yellow + Phthalo Blue GS for the green, and Azo Yellow + Cobalt Blue + Quin Violet for the shadow.
For the Glazing Method version, I used the same colors, but a different technique. First, I painted the entire banana in Azo Yellow. Then, in a later layer, I glazed on a little Phthalo Blue GS for the green stem, and a violet mixed from Cobalt Blue and Quin Violet for the shadow.
Neither is a masterpiece, but the glazed version is definitely better and was also easier!
For the mixed version, when attempting to paint the adjacent colors light and shadow colors in one layer, I kept getting one bleed into the other. I could have painted them on different layers, but it felt like it would defeat the point, since the downside of glazing is waiting for layers to dry.
The mixed shadow color is also not as convincing. For a shadow, it does feel like you want “base color + shadow color at the same time,” an effect you can get from glazing.
Finally, although the glazed version took longer because of waiting for a layer to dry, it was mentally much easier and didn’t require me to try to understand the complex color of the yellow shadow. Instead, I just had to paint the whole banana yellow, then paint a complementary violet over it for the shadow; whatever happens happens at that point.
Conclusion
Of all the glazing chapters so far, this has had the most practical advice, the most convincing arguments for glazing, and the most inspiring ideas. If I were to reorganize this book, I would separate out the flat wash and graded wash advice from chapter 10 and chapter 11 into non-glazing-related chapters, and make this the main chapter on glazing.
Grade: B+. I still think the important and useful points are slightly watered down by poor organization, but! There are important and useful points! And this is the first time I felt really convinced by the book about glazing – that it’s a useful technique that makes certain effects easier rather than a novelty that makes everything harder for no reason.