Color Corrections

Terracotta Bowl Still Life, oils on canvas panel, 9" x 12," first version

Terracotta Bowl Still Life, second version

The New Year's winter session started this week and I am back in class to sharpen my vision of color and form. Henry Hensche said, "Every change in form is a change in color," and that is one of the most difficult things for a painter to represent accurately.

There was another activity scheduled in the classroom afterward, so our class was a bit shorter than usual yesterday. None of us students were able to develop our paintings much beyond the basic light and shadow stage.

I thought my purple cloth background was way too pink and the third apple in shadow a bit too dark, but I had no time to correct these things in class. After I got home I decided to try to adjust these, relying on memory (a dangerous thing to attempt, I know). I think the purple background is much closer to the true color in the second version; although the apple's value is closer to true, the color became a bit muddy.

In any case, the comparison between the two versions is interesting, particularly if you take into account the fact none of the other objects in the painting were changed. Yet they appear somewhat different because the two versions of the same painting were photographed in very different light--today it's heavily overcast, whereas yesterday was bright and sunny.