Newsletter March, 2004 A Free Newsletter for Those Who Love to Paint

Color of the Month

Naples Yellow

Although all yellows are warm, I think of Naples yellow as just a little bit warmer than most, maybe because it isn't as bright as cadmium or lemon yellow. It has a soft tone, unusual in oil paint yellows. It isn't a strong pigment, so I do not use it to mix with other colors very often. I use Naples yellow three ways: in landscapes I use it as the local color of most yellow man-made objects. Houses, signs, truck etc. need a softer yellow than cadmium or lemon and I find Naples yellow works well. The second reason to keep it on my palette is to warm up the light value areas of white or cream colored objects. I find it gives a nice glow without being harsh. The third way I use Naples yellow is when I paint people. A touch on flesh tones will give a hint of sunlight. Add Naples yellow to your palette and give your paintings a warm glow.

Tool of the Month

Blue Painters' Tape

You find this in the house paint department around the masking tape. It has the wonderful property of not pulling up the paint that it is placed on. The blue will give you a couple of days of easy pull up. There is also a purple version that can be left on paint for up to a week. This is great stuff for masking off straight lines on a painting, taping up reference photos, closing up boxes... Use it for whatever you would use old fashion masking tape for - but without the mess.

Big Skies

How big is your sky? How big should it be? Like most things - it depends. There are a few rules you should follow when you paint a sky.

Chances are you want to create a sense of space when you paint a landscape. The best way to achieve this is to have your sky darkest at the top of the painting and becoming more white as it approaches the horizon. The larger the difference between the values, the 'bigger' the sky will appear and the bigger the sense of space will become. If you go from ultramarine blue to almost white you will get the biggest space of all. But the rule holds true for any blue, from cerulean to cobalt to indigo...

Try it with any sky color - the pinks of sunrise, the golds of sunsets and even the nearly blacks of night. We live on a sphere and the atmosphere, our sky, is also a sphere so the sky needs to be curved. How do we make a 'curved' surface on a painting? It is with the use of 5 values - so we need to have at least 5 values in our skies. Do that and your skies will appear more real.

The only exception is fog - it appears as a wall so there is little or no change in values of a foggy sky. But cloudy skies still have a change in value, so keep that in mind.

To create even more space, your values should also change from side to side, but not as drastically.

Keep these couple of rules in mind and make your skies as big as you would like.

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