Vikontessa
Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova, OL
The key to good
illumination involves the use of color as a
structural part of your design. A good drawing can
be ruined by a poor choice in colors, while a so-so
design can be enhanced and made even better by the
careful consideration and use of appropriate
color.
There
are three primary colors in the spectrum and these
are red, blue, and yellow. Any other color can (in
theory) be made by mixing these colors together. By
mixing any two of the primary colors together you
arrive at the secondary colors and these are
orange, green, and purple. This gives us the major
colors of the spectrum, and arranged in a circle (a
color wheel), they run clockwise starting at the
top: red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
purple.
It's important to
understand how a color wheel works if you have any
intention of shading with color to give your
illumination a three-dimensional look. The primary
colors are scattered around the color wheel with
the secondary colors inserted between them. If you
draw a line from each primary color to the color
just opposite it on the wheel, you will see
red-green, yellow-purple, blue-orange. These are
complimentary pairs, and each color has an
opposite, or complement.
Using the
Colour Wheel
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All
within a third. All the colours
within a third of the wheel (that
any 4 adjacent colours in our
wheel) will work well together in
harmony.
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Separated
by a third. Any 3 colours spaced
equally around the wheel work
well although - it is best to
have one as a dominant colour
with the other two being used to
'setoff' the effect. Such a
colour scheme can give an
exciting effect.
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Two
across. Any two colours across
the wheel are complementary. With
one colour used as the dominant
scheme, the other colour will
'set off' the effect.
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(Figures from http://www.diydata.com/planning/colour/colour.htm)
To give an object a
three-dimensional feel, you must give a sense of
nearness to those portions of the object nearest
the viewer and distance to those portions which are
farthest from the viewer. For any rounded object,
the middle of it will always be closest and the
edges will be farthest away. The rules for shading
(using darks and lights to give depth) are that the
farther away it is from your eye, the darker and
less intense the color will be. The closer it is,
the lighter and more intense the color is. Those
portions of an object which are turned to the light
will be the lightest, and those portions of an
object which are in shadow will be
darkest.
So how does one make a
color lighter or darker and so give a sense of
depth? By now you've probably discovered that you
can make a color lighter by adding white to it. It
therefore follows that by adding black to a color,
that color will get darker. This is so, but you
will find that this yields less than perfect
results. Adding black to a color certainly makes it
darker, but it also causes the color to lose its
value (like blue's sense of blueness) and starts
becoming muddy and murky -- some times it turns
into another color altogether (adding black to
yellow doesn't give you dark yellow; it gives you
an olive green color). The secret in darkening
colors without changing their value lies in the
proper use of a color wheel.
You darken a color by
mixing it with its complement. For example, yellow
can be made darker by adding a little purple to it.
To make it a little bit dark, add a little bit of
purpled; to make it a lot darker, add a lot more
purple. This works both ways: to darken purple, add
yellow. And so on with the other colors.
The first step in
shading with color is choosing the light source:
i.e., from which direction is the light falling on
the object you're painting? Once you've decided
which will be the dark side and which will be the
light, remain consistent. Step two: paint whatever
it is -- let's say , a yellow heraldic lion -- with
the color as it comes out of the tube (yellow,
medium (see
footnote)), or
whatever shade is the 'base' color that you've
decided on. I recommend you use a plastic palette
with little round depressions to hold your paint.
Put yellow straight out of the tube in one holder,
put straight purple into another, and plain white
into the third. Put more straight yellow into
another holder and add a dab of purple (don't try
to add light colors to dark ones or you'll end up
with enough paint to cover your entire scroll --
always start with the light color) and mix. Put
white into another holder and add some yellow to
it. Now you should have dark yellow, plain yellow,
and light yellow. Use the dark yellow to paint all
the around the edges of the lion and to mark the
interior details, using thick strokes for the
shadowed places (the undersides of arms and legs,
chin, the curve of the tail and the claws), and
thin strokes in the lighter areas (upper surfaces
of limbs, the head, the upper side over the curve
of tail and claws). Take the light yellow and go
over all those areas which normally would catch the
light, away from the dark edges.
Where an object
overlaps another object, a shadow will be cast;
this is usually the case with flaps of mantling on
the achievement. Where a piece of green mantling
overlaps a piece of yellow mantling, place a thick
line of dark yellow next to the junction to
indicate a shadow is being thrown onto the yellow,
and where the green mantling is shadowed place a
thick line of dark green (green + a little red)
along the edge.
The more shades of a
color that you use, the greater the feeling of
depth and the greater the illusion caused by the
eye blending the different shades of color
together. I often make up four shades of a color in
addition to the plain color as it is straight out
of the tube, it's complement, and white. Some
details may require mixing up a dab of really dark
paint to emphasize the deep dark shadows under the
curve of the ear, a nostril, or the line where a
joint bends.
Plan your scroll to
include the signatures at the bottom and space for
the seals and make sure to mark just where they're
supposed to go, either with pen, an enclosing
design, or pencil.
West Kingdom scrolls
are always sealed with red sealing compound,
therefore try to include a little red in your
illumination. Too much bright red at the bottom of
your scroll will make it appear bottom-heavy, the
seals something just randomly stuck down there and
not a part of the whole. By scattering some read
throughout the scroll, it gathers the drifting
elements of the arms, the illuminated Capital, any
border work or designs, and the seals together in
to a single working unit.
When repeating a color
throughout a scroll from top to bottom r from side
to side helps to tie all of the elements together
and keeps them from drifting about, lost in an
expanse of white paper. If your color scheme does
not allow the addition of red, try to surround the
seals and the area for the signatures with the same
sort of design you've used in the illuminated
capital that starts the scroll.
A Note on
Problem Colors
The two colors which
give an artist the most trouble the first time
around are red and flesh-tone. Unlike any other
color, red will not turn light red if you add white
to it -- red turns into another color entirely.
It's called pink. Pink is a nice color but it isn't
light red, and you need light red for shading. The
way to get around this problem is to remember that
some reds are redder than other reds. Go out and
purchase a tube of Red, Light. This is a slightly
orangish red, and when you add white to it, becomes
a light orangish red, not pink! Put in your
lightest shading using Red, Light. Gradually start
adding Red, Medium to it as it grows darker (to
prevent the entire object from looking red-orange
instead of 'pure' red), and eventually switch over
to Red, Medium. Done carefully, no one will ever
notice that part of the object is a touch more
orange than the rest of it.
Flesh tone can now be
bought in tubes, but in my day you had to mix it. I
would mix a large amount of pink (white and red)
with a dab each of yellow and blue added, and some
brown (burnt umber) thrown in. The dilemma arose
when I tried to darken it. To darken a color you
add its opposite, complementary color, and flesh
tone has all three primary colors in it. How then
to darken it? I won't go into how much paint I
threw away trying to figure that one out. Another
artist told me the trick: make flesh tone by mixing
Orange, Medium and white together, and add a bit of
burnt umber. To make it lighter, add more white; to
make it darker, add more umber. At first this
mixture will look too orangish to your eyes, but
once you get it down on paper and start shading
with it, you'll find that it looks just like
regular flesh tone, and is much easier to deal
with.
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1.
Tubes of paint are often distinguished as Light,
Medium, or Deep; for example: Red, Light; Red,
Medium; Red, Deep. Red, Light has some yellow in it
and looks more orangish; Red, Deep has blue in it
and looks more purplish; Red, Medium is that color
exactly as it appears in the spectrum and is
uncontaminated by any other color.
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