Tuesday, January 25, 2011

"Plum Quartet"



Painting red objects can be a challenge. I try to create a convincing sense of light in my paintings by pushing the warm/cool relationships in the subject. However, when you lighten red it often turns a cool pink (too much white) or it turns orange (too much yellow). The solution I've found is to darken the darks with blue/purple and lighten the lights with yellow/orange. This may be too much info! Anyway, the key is to push carefully in both directions.

3 comments:

yasha said...

Thanks Mike for the valuable info.I did face same problem while painting in red.Your work here shows great values.The darks and lights very well differentiated and still the plums are neither pink nor orange,they are beautiful red in color.

Michael Chamberlain said...

Thanks Yasha!

Denise Rose said...

Definitely not too much info! I found out the same thing when painting cherries.