I’m working my way through Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing. Last time, we finally finished the five-chapter run on glazing. Now, we introduce a new concept: color bridges. Color bridges are soft transitions from one section of the painting to another by dropping some of the color from section A into the color for section B.
The purpose of color bridges is “softening abrupt contrasts.” The problem Dobie is trying to solve is too much contrast in your scene.
Signs of too much contrast include:
- sections of the painting look disconnected from each other
- distracting emphasis where you do not want it
So what does a color bridge look like in practice? This is a situation where the visuals are very helpful (and thankfully she includes several), but I’ll try to explain the example situations:
- In a light-colored sandy beach at the foot of dark cliffs, shes drops a bit of the cliff color into the sand and shadows.
- In a scene where gray mountains loom behind a green valley, she drops a bit of the green grass color into the mountains.
- As a light-colored field approaches a dark mass of trees behind, shes gradually darkens the grass color and adds some of the same red that tempers the green of the trees.
- The chapter header painting for this chapter shows a bunch of backlit cows in a field. Red is dropped into the shadow color, implying a flare of sun, and echoing the red of the barn behind.
In many ways, this is the opposite of advice to create a “vibration” and “make color sing” by placing contrasting colors next to each other. Instead, this is a fix for situations where you have inadvertently done this too much, or in parts of the painting that aren’t meant to be the focus.
Projects
Similar to chapter 13, which proposed correcting too-bright or too-dissimilar colors by glazing, this chapter proposes a solution to a problem, so it’s a little difficult to find the right situation in which to employ it.
Blue Sky, Green Grass
I decided to choose a reference photo that naturally divides into different color sections. For my reference photo, I chose a section of this panorama by Simon Walsgrove:
I love the colors in this photo, but the painting challenge is that it would be very easy to paint the grass with one set of colors, then paint the sky with an entirely different set of colors, as if they are parts of different paintings.
First off, I gave the bare trees leaves the same color as the grass, both as a ‘color bridge’ tactic to pull more green into the sky, and to match real-life spring trees!
I also dropped blue sky color as shadows into the grass. This was a choice to make the grass colors shift in temperature more than value.
Finally, I tried to make greenish shadows in the clouds. Unfortunately I did this a bit too late and ended up with unwanted hard edges.
While I had some technical issues with this piece, I think the overall effect of the color-bridging was successful: the grass reflects the sky, the clouds reflect the grass.
Sunset
I looked for a way to adapt these ideas into a typical subject for me. This sunset is based on a photo by friend of the blog Lori.
Sunsets are scenes that naturally lend themselves to color transitions, so I didn’t have to do much. While I didn’t paint this terribly differently than I normally would, I made a special effort to make sure the colors of the sky and the land had a relationship. For example, the yellow of the sky is reflected in the gold crest of the hill. I dropped a little bit of cloud red-orange into the hill as well. (I tried to put some red in the background mountains as well but had some issues with color leaching due to putting it down when the paper was too wet. Oh, well, you can’t have everything!)
Conclusion
I really liked the lesson from this chapter! Maybe it’s not groundbreaking, since I was already aware of the idea of “color harmony,” but I think the effort to keep “color bridges” in mind was helpful to me. It’s easy enough to drop some color from different sections of the painting into each other, and it’s also easy to forget! I like this as an approach to “color harmony” better than a limited palette.
This is also a fairly well-explained idea, defining both the problem/situation and the practical solution, with plenty of visual examples.
Grade: A! I’m giving out my second A!
Comments
3 responses to “Color Bridges: Making Color Sing, Chapter 15”
I think I’m having trouble seeing “color bridges” as different than “color harmony” and limiting the set of colors I use in a painting to ensure that they connect. Bridging does sound nicer than limiting, I’ll admit.
I guess my approach is to think conservatively about whether I need a new color in a different section of a painting and whether I can mix that color from those I’ve already used…and that sounds the same as limiting to me. But in a good way, if that makes sense. For example, in your first attempt, Logan, maybe using some of the sky blue in the grass as opposed to trying to pull green into the sky would have worked to bridge the sections?
I do know there are times I’ve introduced a new color only to find that it stands out as too different, and looks jarring. Do I agree with the overall concept here. It seems like Dobie continues throughout this book to use different names for concepts that already exist. At least she’s consistent about being confusing.
I definitely see that perspective. It’s a similar concept to a limited palette because it’s ultimately about color harmony. But to me, in practice, it felt different. In attempting to add “color bridges,” I looked for additional opportunities to add more of an existing color. I didn’t just think “oh, I need a yellow here, I’ll use one I’ve already used elsewhere in the painting.” I thought, “how can I add more of this yellow somewhere else in the painting?” It is a subtle distinction but I feel this way of looking at it helped me to deviate more from the references.
I particularly like this suggested question for oneself: how can I use this yellow color somewhere else in the painting? That seems like a natural way to approach this concept.