Light & Color

For today's short talk I chose the subject of light and color. Why are these two so important for artists and non artists alike? Color is all around us. As humans we associate different colors with moods and we also have our own favorite colors. We are also lucky that we can see a range of colors with our eyes or better to say with our brains. I am saying this because our eyes are only able to detect red, green and blue in the visible spectrum. The rest of the colors are only interpreted by our brain and hence we do not see them with our eyes.

What is color? To start with color in itself does not exist. Isaac Newton in 1700's described how white light coming from the sun contains all colors of the spectrum as seen in a rainbow. We also know that white light contains other components that our eyes are not able to detect but other animals and insects might also be able to see, such as ultraviolet (UV) or infrared. We see a colored object as red because the surface of that object is reflecting red light into our eyes after being struck by white light. That same object absorbs all the other colors. The colors that our eyes capture are red, green and blue (RGB) same as used in colored TVs and monitors. So we see yellow because our minds create yellow by combining red and green together and yellow happens to be in between these two colors even in the rainbow. The same is cyan, it is a combination of blue and green. The strangest color is actually magenta, because it does not even exist in the rainbow, but it comes out when combining blue and red light. 

We are able to see colored objects only thanks to the presence of white light from the sun or any other light source. We cannot see objects in full color if we do not have light, like at night. In this case we can only see shades of grey, unless the object is really close to you and you have some degree of light

So how does this concerns us as artists? Understanding color and light is always a challenge for artists when they come to paint an illusion of light using paints. Throughout the time artists, and now a days paint manufacturers, always struggled to discover new pigments that can be used to create various light effects in a painting. It is a challenge because we want to reproduce an illusion of light using a material (paint) that actually does not give off light in itself but on the contrary it absorbs white light and reflects only a portion of it. 
 
Here we come to the famous color theory. In the old school we were always taught that the three primary colors are yellow, red and blue. However with the advance in science and a better understanding of light, we now know that this is not completely correct. We now know that we can have different primary colors for paints and for light itself. If we had to take the three primaries of light, red green and blue and try to use them to mix up paint we will end up with different colors to those obtained when mixing light together. If we had to mix green with red paint we will end up getting something close to black instead of yellow, as we get when mixing light. So it will be wise if we take the products of mixing light i.e. yellow, cyan and magenta and use these as primaries when mixing paint. This is known as subtractive color mixing and is now used by modern computer printers to generate every possible color using a system known as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). Because one cannot mix magenta and cyan out of paint, these two colors are also very difficult to produce as pigments and hence not all manufacturers are able to produce them as a pure color.

In my classes I try to emphasize the importance to understand the basic concepts of color in order to be able to mix colors efficiently. My aim is always to try to teach students how to see color in everything and the only way to get your brain trained to see color is by observation from real objects. To paint realistically one needs to train him/her self to see color and not perceive it.​