This month in the Values I class we have concerned ourselves with being able to recognize values in the landscape accurately as well as to understand concepts like Carlson’s Theory of Angles and atmospheric perspective. We often perceive value in Nature inaccurately. For example, warm colors are often judged to be lighter than they actually are. Cool colors, on the other hand, will often be perceived as darker. So, we learn to recognize those tendencies and challenge our visual assumptions.
Another good example of our perception vs. reality occurs with the color attribute of chroma or intensity of a color. One piece of information can help us overcome our preconceived ideas about high chroma colors: generally speaking, the highest level of chroma occurs in the middle value range (as opposed to at the light or dark end of the scale). There are always exceptions to that, with some colors having high chroma in a slightly lighter range and some really dark colors having high chroma (think Prussian Blue). But, if you start out with the idea that if you are seeing high chroma you are probably seeing at least a mid value then you will more times than not be in the right neighborhood value-wise.
Here are some examples of paintings containing high chroma. The greyscale version is presented too, so you can see how chroma trumps value!
A beautiful Isaac Levitan painting with lots of high chroma greens, but all that high chroma color is deceiving. Those foreground greens are at least 5 on the value scale! Bet you thought they were about a 7, right?
Here is a vibrant Willard Metcalf which demonstrates our point ! All that warm chromatic color reads light, but is actually keyed much darker than you might have imagined. Much of this painting is in the middle key.
So, when you see or want to paint high chroma- think middle key!
P.S. Our Practical Color Mixing for Landscape Painters online class starts February 27. Learn to unlock the secrets of color mixing by understanding the concepts of hue, value, temperature and chroma. Discover how to create beautiful color harmonies using limited palettes and to edit the local color provided by Nature into a harmonious color scheme. Join us!
Really enjoyed your discussion of the confusion of value with chroma!
Thanks Tom!
I wish I could join the color class, but I will be traveling. Thank you for these very informative posts.
Wish you could join us Carole. We have missed you in class. Maybe Color II?
Yes, there are times when contrast is made with color rather than value. It is usually in a painting that, when changed to grayscale shows low contrast! The Impressionists often used color intensity and temperature instead of value . Look at Rouen cathedrale of Monet.
There are indeed, time when color trumps value but not always.
Hi Gerald. Thanks for your comment. Yes, when values are close, color temperature and chroma are good ways to create visual contrast. The point I tried to make here is that we often perceive that high chroma colors are a lighter or darker value than they are. Chroma is very often found in the mid tones.
Deborah, when you said that much of the Willard painting (above) was in the middle key, I cannot get it. Comparing it to my Munsell scale (which I now have), the majority of it seems lighter to me. Please can you help me get my head around it?