The Artists Board
Creating the Mood
November 16th 1998

Whether we are inside with a still life that we have spent an hour setting up, or out somewhere looking for subject matter, sometimes, even though the composition is alright, it lacks something. But we are not sure what.

What that something is, I have found most times is mood. As artist we can change the time of day, season, make it sunny, bring on the rain, add to or delete what we see before us - if it is going to make a better picture and satisfy our creative urge.

For example I went out to do some quick sketches for possible pictures to paint at a later date, I came upon this house just outside Melbourne towards a place called Riddle. The painting shows the sun overhead, the sky a clear blue, the leaves on the trees had a tinge of yellow, some people out walking. In reality it was a dull sort of day and quite chilly, but I had no time to come back another day.

I might feel like painting this picture in an evening setting, so I change the time. Its evening, the sun is low, casting long shadows about the farm house. People are strolling along in the barmy evening air. And somewhere in the distance you can hear music. Again, the lighting described here differs from the reality.

This may seem difficult but not when you consider that even if you paint what you see, you will have to make a decision about the light and the shadows very early in the painting process. You’ll have to freeze them at that point in time because they will be very different by time the painting is finished.

So if you spend time looking at the scene before you as I suggested in my last column you will quickly see the movement of the shadows and how they lengthen as the sun drops through the afternoon sky. And it soon becomes easy to estimate where they will be in the evening. So go for it.

The colour won’t be the same as it is now, so to know what colour to use you have to be inventive. We have seen plenty of sunsets, both real and in pictures, so we might choose a palate of triads Violet, Orange, Green. Plus the mixture you can make from them. Or you might like to use a split complimentary try red violet, violet, blue violet, and yellow.

So as you can see we need not be constrained by what is before us whether it ’s landscape or still life we have the means to change it.

In landscapes mood more than anything else is set by the sky, so don’t use the sky as a backdrop just to fill in a large area of paper, let it play it’s part, let it be sunny or stormy, fog and rain, paint your pictures in all the seasons.

Previous article - Achieving clear and beautiful colour

Achieving clear and beautiful colours

November 9th 1998

I am often asked what colours should be used for gum trees, which blue for water, or when I am doing a demonstration, I am asked what colours did I use there.

This assumes that there are set colour palettes for each subject.

While it is good to have an extensive knowledge of how to mix colours and to combine them to achieve the results you desire, looking for colour formulas to rely on can end up stifling your painting. You can end up painting the sky the same blue for the next ten years regardless of what sort of day it is, and the painting then lacks mood, which is a vital ingredient in any good painting.

If we are to have mood, which can only be obtained by good colour, composition, and value, the first thing we must do before we start painting is to observe your subject matter. Spend some time defining what the centre of interest is and the mood you wish to convey to the viewer. By this I don’t mean you must faithfully copy what is before you, for instance, for the sake of the composition you might move a tree or two, or you could change the weather to enhance the subject matter. But this can only be achieved by observation, so painting formulas are not a very good alternative and in fact they stop your development as a painter.

My advice is to decide what overall colour scheme suits what you want to say in your picture, and then test your colours on a similar spare piece of paper. This will insure the colour is what you want and it is the correct value, and you will see how it will look next to the other colours.

Avoid “mud” by thinking out your paint mix before mixing. I find it useful to limit my colours to two or three for mixing. For example, if you want a grayed yellow green, and you use lemon yellow and a little cerulean blue with a touch of its complement violet, you have used four colours because violet contains red and blue. This reduces your chance of a clear colour. Instead, if you use a raw sienna, which is already a grayed yellow and a small amount of viridian, you can get a good clean result with only two colours

When you want to gray a primary colour use it’s complimentary. I find the best results are had when you use the warm and cool temperature colours. To gray a cool yellow like lemon, use a mix of alizarin crimson (cool) and ultramarine blue (blue) and keep p it on the warm side to stop the yellow sliding towards green. For cadmium yellow keep it on the cool (blue) side, you only need a touch to get the results you require this comes with practice. You can gray all the primary colours by this method.

A very good book on colours is “Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green” by Michael Wilcox. It explains and demystifies colour mixing.

In the next article I will continue on this subject, and also be writing about changing the mood by changing the colour.