With Our Complements

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Still Life with Roses and Sunflowers 1886 Vincent van Gogh

In order to understand how to deliberately employ color to achieve an artistic effect requires an intimate knowledge of color itself and above all, color relationships. Any color placed next to another of equal size or mass, will affect how the eye sees and the brain interprets both colors. This principle is thoroughly illustrated in the Josef Albers book, Interaction of Color, which should be in every artist’s collection. Simply change just the mass relationship, where there is more of one color adjacent to another, and the perception of those colors magically changes. They often don’t even look like the same colors sitting on the palette! It is so important that this effect is thoroughly understood before it can be adapted to suit our purposes. Understood or not, with every stroke, it is happening anyway in our paintings, so it is best to absorb these principles up front. Things get very much more complex whe…