Oh My Gosh! I Hate that Color!

Learning to draw is always about this and a sculpture or a painting is nothing more than a drawing turned into a 3d object (as is the case with a sculpture) or a drawing with color added (in the case of a painting).

Van Gogh - master colorist?

Color is, of course complicated by sight.  And not all of the visual signals that are absorbed by our eyes to the visual center of our brains.  Some evidence suggests that the light of different colors enters the eye and indirectly affects the hypothalamus, which in turn affects the pituitary gland.

Our pituitary gland receives about 20% of our visual signals.  And, since the pituitary gland controls our hormone levels is makes sense that it would affect our moods.  

Experiments have shown that in rooms colored in red light, time was overestimated while in green or blue light, time was underestimated.   Workers lifting black boxes had the thought that they were very heavy; but when the same boxes were painted green they felt lighter.

Blackfriars Bridge in London, was painted black sometime back in history.  A huge number of people committed suicide leaping from the bridge until it was painted bright green.

Whatever we see is assessed by our brains which relates the current visual data with information stored in our memory.  We all have rods and cones in our retina which responds to light (in subtle ways unique to each individual) and various receptors in our brain are sensitive to certain vibrations.

When painting it is important to remember that the human eye sees warm colors before cool colors. - which is why warm colors advance and cool colors recede.  We see highly saturated colors as appearing closer than colors of low saturation.

What were the impressionist artists trying communicate and achieve with their prolific use of color?
Hope you all have a colorful, fun, and safe 4th of July tomorrow!

'Til then :)

~Alex