This document discusses how artists use color and light to convey emotion and set moods. It provides examples of artists like Rembrandt, Monet, and Sargent who mastered using contrasts of light and dark or warm and cool colors. The document also explains how monochromatic color schemes can enhance particular moods and how backlighting, moonlight, or glow effects can make paintings more evocative. Finally, it discusses color theory and using chromatic scales with lighter, brighter, and warmer colors in the light areas to enhance the illusion of light in a painting.

1. Color and “Light”

2. ‘light’ = ‘emotion’
the contrast of light and dark
the variety of warm and cool

3. Rembrandt

4. Monet

5. Berthe
Morisot

6. Berthe Morisot “La Fable”

7. John Singer Sargent

8. John Singer Sargent

9. Winslow Homer

10. Maurice de Vlaminck

11. Alexei Jawlensky

12. Paul Gauguin

13. Emile Nolde

14. Peter Doig

15. R. B. Kitaj

16. Melissa Miller

17. Fred Martin

18. The “language of light”

19. Monochromatic color schemes enhance a particular mood
Wolan Huang

20. Nathan Oliveira

21. “Theatrical” light: spotlight, cast shadow, metallic glow

23. (Johannes Vermeer, 1665)
Backlighting

24. Without backlighting
With backlighting

27. Glowing Light
mystical,
supernatural light
the light isn't
falling on the
flower, the light is
coming from it. It is
the source of the
light.
Georgia O'Keefe

28. Matthias Grünewald
Isenheim Altarpiece 1615

29. Hirsch

30. Moonlight is a very evocative light for the artist

31. Light can be found in an abstract painting
Graham Sutherland

32. Francis Picabia
1913

33. Antediluvian Sleep Hirsch

34. Color theory to enhance the illusion
of “light”

35. What’s the ‘true color’ of the house?
It depends on the time of day and the weather
The ‘real’ color doesn’t exist independently of the light

36. Claude Monet painted ‘white marble’ on the Rouen Cathedral in different
times of day, showing that color doesn’t exist independently of the light

37. Since color is “relative,” we use warm and cool versions of each color to enhance the feeling of “light”

38. The chromatic scale
to enhance the
illusion of “light”
Lighter b/w value in the light
Brighter intensity in the light
Warmer (orangey) red in the
light (vs bluer purplish) in
the shadow

39. Chromatic scale
• Light to dark
• Bright to dull
• Warm to cool

40. Black
and white
is the “value” of
the color
Chromatic scale

41. Chromatic scale

42. Chromatic scale

43. Charles Demuth

45. Georgia O’Keefe

46. Student study of Cezanne

47. • This isn’t a ‘rule,’
it’s a ‘recipe’ to
enhance the
illusion of ‘light’

48. Robert Haemmerling

49. Limited Palette

56. Abstractions in a Lost Tongue
Glenn Hirsch