I’m working on an eerie night/early morning painting at the moment. I want to share with you a particularly tricky color problem I faced.
Below is the reference photo I’m painting from. I took this on our last trip to Kingfisher Bay in Queensland, Australia. It was about 5:30 am and I was fishing alone on the jetty.
The tricky problem involves the white tops of those three pylons.
White objects in shadow are notoriously difficult to paint, as they invite all kinds of color illusions and trickery. Usually, you’ll find that white objects in shadow will appear lighter than they really are due to something called color constancy. I won’t get into the science of it here; I just want to show you it in action.
Take a look at the zoomed-in version of the photo below. Do the white pylon tops appear roughly the same color to you? They don’t for me. The pylon top on the left appears a bit darker and the pylon top on the right appears a bit lighter. The middle pylon top appears somewhere in between.
But the pylon tops are roughly the same color. It’s just that they appear different due to the way we perceive light and color. I’ll show you what I mean. In the image below, I placed three squares of the same color above each pylon. The gray is roughly the same as the pylon tops.
Notice how the square on the right appears a touch lighter than the other two. I’m also noticing a slight color gradation, with the right square appearing a bit darker in the top left corner.
To confirm the squares are in fact the same color, below is the image without the reference photo in the background (and with some of the extra space removed). I made no other changes. Do the squares look different? They do for me.
What’s happening here?
The background colors in the reference photo are influencing how we perceive the “white” pylon tops. On the left, the background is lighter. On the right, the background is darker. Our perception system is accommodating for this, and that’s why the pylon tops (and the colored squares) appear different in color, even though they are basically the same.
When it comes to that slight color gradation I noticed with the right square, I would say this is being caused by the gradation in the background (see how the background goes from dark to light).
If all this seems confusing, don’t worry! For now, all you need to know is that color is not always as it seems and that our perception of a color can change depending on the surrounding colors.
I’ll let you know how the painting turns out shortly.
If you ever want to learn more about color and light, you should check out our Sunrises and Sunsets Workshop.
Happy painting!
Dan Scott
Draw Paint Academy
What I’m reading: Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. Good so far!
