Graham Hanks Art Talk

If you read my first post on Colour theory (see here) you would recall that I made the argument for using Cyan, Magenta & Yellow as your three ‘primaries’ and as a starting point for colour theory this is ok, however real life colour is a bit more complex than that.

Colours mixable with Cyan, Magenta & Yellow

If you look at the circle above, this theoretically represents all the colours the human eye can perceive (some scientists show a more horseshoe shaped image but a circle is easier to understand) you will notice a triangle drawn within this circle – the points of this triangle represent the positions of the three colours Cyan, Magenta & Yellow.

By joining these ‘primaries’ together you get a triangle showing the colours that can be mixed with those three colours, as you can see this falls short of the colours available in real life! there are actually large portions of the circle that cannot be mixed with these three ‘primaries’.

If you think this is bad just look at the amount of colours you can mix with the old fashioned Red, Yellow & blue primaries:

Colours mixable with Red, Yellow & Blue primaries

Looking at the above its easy to see why its so hard to get greens when using Red,Yellow & Blue as your primary colours, at least with the Cyan. Magenta & Yellow system you get some reasonable greens!

The simple truth is that no three colour mixing system will cover all the colours available as no triangle can cover all of that circle, this is why I have started to teach the use of what I call the ‘Hexagon Mixing System’ a six colour system using Yellow, Red, Magenta, Blue, Cyan & Green as its primary colours, by having six points evenly spaced around the colour circle to create a hexagon, you can cover much more expansive range than any three colour primary system:

Range of colours possible with a six colour system

The range of Greens possible in particular far outstrips anything from the three colour mixing systems, and the blues are certainly more vivid.

There is another six colour mixing system in widespread use – the so called split primary system which uses two hues of Yellow, two of Blue and two of Red, but although this does expand the range of colours that can be achieved with Reds, Yellows & Blues, it still falls far short of the colour range of the hexagon mixing system:

Using split primaries to expand the colour spread of the old mixing system

As an Art tutor I find that the six colour ‘Hexagon Mixing System’ is actually easier to teach, as the colours do exactly what you would expect them to do, mixing Cyan & Magenta to get blue for example is not exactly intuitive for many people and not necessary here as you already have a blue without any mixing.  If you look at the mixing circle below you can see how intuitive using six primaries can be, to get a Yellow-Green for example you only have to mix Green & Yellow, to get a Blue-Green you mix Green & Blue

mixing colurs is easy with the Hexagon System

many years ago I read a quote that stayed with me for years:

“If you want to see the centre of a circle you need to step outside of that circle, for it is only then that you can see the circle in its entirety”

I can’t remember where I heard this saying (possibly Zen Buddhist?) or even if this is an accurate rendition, but its a concept that has served me well in many situations.  In this blog post I’m going to talk about how this applies to the creative process, and why it is indeed essential to step outside the circle.

Anyone who has been a regular in my lessons will tell you that the one thing I’m constantly telling them is that they need to walk to the other side of the studio to look at their work, because when you are sat on top of a piece of work you can’t see what you are doing properly.

A simple example of this is when you are doing a portrait from a B&W photo, you can study the photo with great intensity reproducing all the shades you think you can see, but then if you get back by a couple of metres and look at the photo & drawing side by side you would be amazed at the subtleties of light and shade you completely missed before.  Why this happens is complicated, and not really important to know, but your eyes and brain can see subtleties better from a distance than they can from close up, and this can apply to colour & composition as well as shade.

Whenever I tell a student to step back from their work they start to see where they have been going wrong in their painting, and start to see what they need to do to make it right. And conversely, in some cases they have convinced themselves that their painting has gone wrong – until they step back and realise that what they have been doing is actually a lot better than they thought (this happened only just yesterday when a student was convinced that she was doing badly till I got her to look from a few steps back and she saw that her picture was in fact really good)

This ties in with another philosophy I have about painting that you need to see the whole of a painting in order to understand what you are doing, get too buried in details instead of looking at the whole and you will struggle to make a balanced and well considered work of art, you need to sketch your painting out and work on the whole composition in such a way that the whole painting comes together in a unified way.

To understand why this is important consider the dangers of painting a picture one small section at a time, for example you paint an eye, when that is perfect you paint the other eye, then the mouth and so on, many people work this way but it is a very unbalanced way to work with inherent dangers for the artist.  Lets say for example the first eye you paint/draw is too dark, the next detail then has to be made darker to match the shade of the first eye, and the next detail is matched to that and so on – resulting in the entire image being too dark because the first detail was wrong!

If on the other hand you work on the whole painting at once, sketching in the overall light and shade then gradually adding detail & intensity as you go along, not only can you minimise the knock on effect if one part of the painting is wrong, you can evaluate the painting as a whole at each stage by just stepping back and looking at the overall effect – even in the early stages of the composition!

on your next painting / drawing try it out, keep stepping back a few paces to look at it in a more distanced way – you may be surprised at the greater harmony you can achieve in your work by stepping outside the circle

Think back to your art lessons at school, chances are that you were taught that every colour can be mixed by the three primary colours Red, Yellow & Blue – and the chances are that when you tried to put that into practice the results were disastrous, the purples you expected turned out brown, and the best green you could manage was a sort of dirty looking olive green.

If this sounds familiar don’t worry, even many professional artists and art lecturers get it wrong too, a case in point was a painting course I attended last year where on the first day the Professor tried to explain basic colour theory – but when he tried to demonstrate how to mix a purple from red and blue it turned out brown – so he dipped his brush in some purple paint and painted over the mud he’d created to fix it! and the strange thing was that it never ocurred to him that the reason he had to do that was that his basic understanding of colour was flawed, and had he been using true primaries then he wouldn’t have needed to fudge it.

The true theoretical primaries, Cyan, Magenta & Yellow

The truth is that the ‘primary’ colours taught at most schools & colleges are wrong, modern colour science has proven that the true pigment primaries are Cyan, Magenta & Yellow – not Red, Blue and Yelow, but stubborn dogma on the part of the art establishment means that many artists refuse to let go of their firmly held beliefs, even the abstract painters seem to adhere to these archaic ideas about colour (which is odd when you consider that they claim to be ‘Modern’ artists and yet totally disregard modern scientific theories about colour!)

Another point of view worth mentioning here is that some people disagree with the idea of 3 primary colours altogether, there are no divisions in real life colour (such as rainbows for example) so all pure pigments are in a sense primary colours, the three colour systems are just an artificial way of trying to organise natural physics into a human framework.

There is actually a lot to be said for this point of view, but if you are going to have a usable colour mixing system then you have to choose a set of ‘Primaries’ that enables the maximum amount of colours to be mixed in the most easily understandable way.

Cyan, Magenta & Yellow mixed together to create the Secondary colours Red, Blue & Green

Now look at the simple colour wheel above, this shows the colours you get when mixing the true modern primaries together, the mixture of Yellow & Cyan gives Green just as you would expect, but mixing Yellow & Magenta creates Red! Red is supposed to be a primary colour (and if you remember what you were taught at school, you can’t mix primary colours from any other colours – thats what makes them primary colours!) also mixing Cyan & Magenta together makes Blue – another supposed primary colour!

So in pigment terms Cyan Magenta & Yellow are (theoretical) ‘primary’ colours and Red, Green & Blue are (theoretical) ‘secondary’ colours, so called because they are made by mixing two primeary colours together to create a ‘secondary’ colour.

One disclaimer I need to make here is that the colours you get in a theoretical situation like a computer program are not the same as the Colours you will get when mixing real pigments, not least of all because even now most pigment manufacturers cannot make perfect Cyan, Magenta & Yellow pigments, (or Red, Green & Blue  pigments for that matter) which is why I refer to these colours as ‘theoretical’ primaries & secondaries.

Colour mixing wheel based on Cyan, Magenta & Yellow

Now look at the diagram above, this takes the colour mixing wheel further by splitting it up into 12 sections, so that now for example Yellow and Red are mixed together to form Orange, then Red and Magenta are mixed together to create Rose and so on, the dots around the edge show the proportions of the primary colours needed to mix each colour, so for example Orange would require three parts Yellow to one part Magenta.

using a simple colour wheel like this you could mix almost any colour from just the three primaries with a reasonable amount of success (even with the less than perfect pigments you would use in real life)

One oddity that the above illustration brings up is an interesting question regarding colour terminology, according to tradition only the three colours created by mixing equal amounts of the primaries are called secondaries (in this case Red, Green & Blue) and all other colours are classed as  tertiary colours (Tertiary means three or third as in three colours or third colour)

But if you look at the colour mixes none of the colours above have more than 2 primaries in their mix so can any of them be accurately be termed Tertiary colours?  Since I’m not interested in perpetuating traditions just for the sake of it I’m inclined to call ALL the colours on the above wheel Secondary colours (apart from the three primaries of course).

A colour wheel created using just three colours of oil paint, unfortunately the photo doesn't do justice to the vibrancy of the colours here.

To prove that this colour theory works  the above wheel was created in oils using the three modern primaries – this was done without cheating or enhancing the colours in any way, just straightforward mixing (I have read uninformed comments on other blogs about how Cyan, Magenta & Yellow only works in printing – obviously by people who have never even attempted to actually test their theories out, which is why I felt it important to put my money where my mouth is as they say).

The colours used on this colour circle were: Winsor Yellow (PY74), Winsor Blue green shade (PB15.3) and Quinacridone Magenta (PR122), although these are not perfect ‘theoretical’ primaries (ie not as pure as the colours in a computer model) they do a remarkably good job of creating a range of vibrant clean colours that would be impossible with the traditional Red, Yellow & Blue colour primaries.

Now, the crunch question is: does this mean we should only use Cyan, Magenta & Yellow on our pallettes?  absolutely not! just because its possible to mix all colours from just these three doesn’t mean you must do so always (despite what some supporters of the CMY colour scheme would have you believe) there are so many beautiful pigments with unique properties all to themselves that it would be ridiculous not to use them!

Colour theory (particularly mixing circles) are tools to help you understand how all the colours on your pallette relate to each other so you can make better use of them – for example knowing that Ultramarine Blue lies exactly between Cyan & Magenta means knowing that you can create a vivid purple just by adding Quinacridone Magenta to your Ultramarine (or you could just use Dioxazine purple)

Of course what I’ve outlined here is just the simple basics of colour mixing, but hopefully it will help you to get cleaner colours in your paintings, so go experiment and see what wondorous colours you can mix with this knowlege!

I originally posted this on my other blog before I started this one, but I feel that this belongs here more so I’m reposting it with some additions to the original:

I’ve just recently invested in some handmade oil paints by Michael Harding, and I believe that they are some of the best oil paints in production today, in fact I find myself buying handmade materials from smaller companies more and more these days, oils from Michael harding, handmade pastels from Unison in Northumberland, and handmade brushes from Rosemary & co in West Yorkshire, partially because I like to support our cottage industries, but mostly because I find the quality superior to that of the big art manufacturers.

The way these paints are made fits in nicely with my personal philosophy about oil painting in that all you need for a good painting is oil and pigment, everything else is just over complicating matters, and there are no fillers or preservatives in these paints – just top quality pigments and linseed oil (and in the odd case a touch of wax, apparently ultramarine blue for example is completely unusable without a small amount of wax to fix the consistency of the paint).

I’m sure I’ll get a lot of flack for saying this but there are a lot of artists out there who are constantly searching for the ‘secret recipe’ of the old masters in the hope that it will help them make better paintings, and unfortunately they are completely missing the point – there is no secret recipe! it was the skill of the old masters that made their paintings awesome not the composition of their paint, modern scientific analysis has proven that many of the great old paintings were in fact just made with oil and pigment!

In fact I would go so far as to say that although its good to look at the old masters for inspiration, especially in terms of painting technique and brush mastery, trying to copy their paints and palettes is a waste of time for several reasons, not least of all because the lighting conditions in which the old masters worked were very different to the modern world we live in, when most of the great classical paintings were created the majority of them were designed to be displayed in candlelit churches, and candles give off a much redder and lower intensity light than any modern lightbulb.

Sometimes in the National Gallery they will demonstrate this by showing people an old painting in the artificial light of the gallery – then they switch off the lights and light some candles so people can see the painting as it was meant to be seen – the transformation is huge the painting will suddenly seem to glow with an internal light that just can’t be seen by daylight or modern artificial light, and the colours are transformed too because of the red shift given by the candlelight.

Bearing this in mind what use is a palette designed for candlelight in the modern world of electric lighting and brighter daylight filled buildings (the amount of light in todays buildings is much higher than our ancestors were used to) the colours that would have made a beautiful portrait in pre electric lighting times would only result in a slightly green/blue tone under contemporary conditions! so its up to the modern artist to adapt to the enviornment they find themselves working in and to find the colour palettes that work in contemporary lighting situations!

I recently replied to a post on an art forum in which someone asked if using the grid method to transfer drawings was cheating, which took me aback a little as the grid method has been used since the middle ages by just about every major artist going, so in no way would it be classed as cheating.

This got me to thinking about the kind of artistic climate that could result in an artist being so paranoid about being accused of ‘cheating’ that they are even worried about an ancient and well accepted method for drawing transfer, this seems to be especially prevalent on the art forums where discussions about tracing & using projectors ect can get very heated – even just working from photo’s in the first place can tend to be looked down on by some artists!

I can’t help feeling that such attitudes are a bit Archaic and tend to be an unpleasant hangover from the days of the big art academies where very strict rules were imposed on how an artist should work – much to the detriment of art in general, sure the ‘technical’ acheivements of the Academy system produced some incredibly detailed work, but it also resulted in some very lifeless paintings too, no wonder the Impressionists rebelled against this to work in a looser and more expressionistic manner – they could see how dead and lifeless much of the Academic art was becoming!

In the photographic age the need to slavishly record every minute detail became pointless, there just isn’t the need to be trained as human photocopiers anymore (which is why the Academies became largely irrelevant in the modern age) if anything it has become important for paintings to transcend the mundane reality recorded by cameras to achieve a greater reality (by this I mean spiritual reality not photographic reality) even portrait painters need to ask themselves whether they need to capture more than just photorealist images.

So to get back to the cheating question, does it really matter what method you use to get the basic outlines onto your canvas so long as the finished painting has a soul that transcends the methods used? those initial lines are not the work of art, they are just a guideline, a map to help the artist position elements properly, its what happens after those marks are made that makes or breaks a painting.

I can already hear the cries of sacrilege coming from the portrait & figurative community, but consider this, do we question the methods used by abstract or expressionist painters? when was the last time you asked someone if they cheated when putting down the initial sketch for their latest abstract? yet the minute we do anything remotely realist we suddenly become paranoid about how we put down these initial guidelines!

Its interesting that from another angle there are some who don’t think you should draw at all! I was on a painting course in Venice last year and the lecturer told us not to do any drawings before painting the models in front of us because if you are drawing then you are not painting, and we were supposed to be painting from life! I found this way of working interesting, but at the same time its a point of view that is almost as extreme as being told you shouldn’t ‘cheat’ when you do an initial drawing (and is a point of view that would be anathema to those who consider the drawing stage to be the most important spart of a painting)

Thats not to say artists shouldn’t learn how to draw, I always insist on teaching my students to draw before I’ll let them anywhere near a paintbrush, but once trained to draw I have become a lot less insistent on making them always draw by sight only when producing their outlines, if tracing means they can get on with the important bit of doing the actual painting more quickly then I’m happy to let them do it (so long as I know they have the skill to draw it without ‘cheating’ if I ask them to)

As one of my old lecturers at art college used to tell me “if it looks right it is right” it doesn’t matter what processes you used to get there, it doesn’t even matter if there are mistakes in the draughtsmansip, or if the colours are a bit wrong, if it looks right it IS right because you have created a work of art and not a photocopy!

Accusing people of cheating because of their working methods serves no purpose other than to make the accusers feel superior to those they accuse and belittle, and its a waste of breath trying to argue with these kind of people because they are incapable of grasping the idea that the only rule in art is that there are no rules, or that art should be about the soul of the painting not the technical details (its interesting that these are usually the same people who want to see a return to the old academy system of teaching, because they think that a certain set of rules and techniques will magically make them into good artists).

So if someone accuses you of cheating ask yourself if it really matters, or should you be worrying more about how you express yourself than about the techniques you use.

Every now and then I find myself in the zone when I’m painting, I just become so absorbed in what I’m doing that all sense of time and space becomes lost in my own little virtual world – all that exists is me and my paints.

Its a wonderful place being in that painting zone, a place of peace and tranquility, where all my worries just dissolve away and my mind becomes one with the art, its almost like some kind of deep meditation made of light and colour, where the pigments seem to sing with radiance and you feel a simple joy in the subtle interactions between the layers of paint.

The only trouble with being in the zone is when you look up and realise its 2am in the morning and you have to take the kids to school in a few hours time!

Needless to say I’m only half awake today!

The other day a student (Robert Wise) was producing an excellent likeness of a young man and he asked me if he should paint in the spots, a perfectly valid question of course, and my reply was not to put them in as the young man in question would not want to be reminded that he was spotty and at the end of the day the spots were not permanent features, in time they would fade but in the painting he would be left with a permanent reminder of these unfortunate blemishes.

This reminded me of something I read the other day about how the renaissance painters worked as much from imagination and memory as they did from observation, very often the figures you see in high renaissance art are not portraits but idealised concepts of humanity constructed from many sources in order to create the perfect human form.

Thats not to say that They didn’t do life drawing – they spent many hours drawing studies of the human form, but these excercises were more often to help them memorise the human anatomy so that when they painted their masterpieces they knew what their invented figures should look like.

Even up to victorian times many of the ‘classical’ paintings used idealised figures created from the best bits of several models, one of the reasons the pre-raphaelites were controversial at the time was that they used depictions of real people to illustrate the classic religious & mythological subjects instead of idealised inventions, which was quite shocking for the audience of the time (and even then its doubtful they would have gone so realistic as to have included any spots ect) the realist movements that followed were considerd even more shocking for their portrayal of the everyday life of the peasants.

Of course nowadays we take realism in paintings for granted and don’t blink an eye when ordinary people are portrayed in an unflattering way, but is there still room for invention in paintings?  personally I think there is, I often change details in my paintings from what I see in my reference photo’s – sometimes to improve the composition or other visual aspects of the reference or to  add a completely new background, in some cases I’ve even changed the appearance of the people in my paintings to suit whatever it is that I’m trying to convey.

I often tell my students that they don’t have to be slaves to their reference photo’s, reproducing every detail exactly as it appears, the photo’s are guides only not  some kind of blueprint that is set in stone – even with portraits! at the end of the day you are an artist not a human photocopier, and one of the great things about art is the ability to use invention to improve on what is already there whilst still being faithfull to the reality of the subject.

Returning to Roberts painting , the point was that the painting had already captured an excellent likeness of the subject, where the personality and spirit of the young man shone out, so why add details that were totally unnecessary to the purpose of the painting? certainly leaving them out did not make the portrait any less convincing – by using artistic license he had created a painting of the young man that accurately captured his likeness without including the less easthetically pleasing details

So please when creating a painting from a photo remember that you are an artist and its your job to create inspirational art not to create a reproduction photo the hard way, the more you let yourself be a slave to your references the less you are being an individual with a creative mind.

Graham Hanks

Although I already have a blog where I post my current artwork in progress and other images related to my work ( greywolf-art.blogspot.com/ ) I decided to set this blog up as an Art discussion Site where I can talk about issues related to art and occasionally discuss art techniques and ideas.

I’m hoping that over the coming months you will find the posts on here informative and  educational (and maybe ocasionally controversial) and if nothing else I suspect you will learn a great deal about myself as an artist

Looking forward to sharing with you all,

Graham Hanks