One technique that the French and California Impressionists used successfully in their artwork is optical color mixing. If you view two adjacent color spots from a distance, the eye mixes them to form a third color. The result of mixing two saturated colors is a third, less saturated color. There are several benefits to this approach. The first is that by letting the eye do the mixing, more light reaches the eye than if you were to fully mix the colors physically on the painting. This gives the painting luminosity and makes the color in the painting carry further into the distance. Another is that the vibration created by this approach adds visual interest to otherwise flat areas of color in the painting.

In this painting of Bastia Harbor, Corsica, the wall is painted using equal amounts of two complementary colors, blue grays and burnt siennas, which creates a luminous, almost neutral gray.

In this course unit

In this unit we are going to look at various approaches for using brushwork to let the viewer’s eye mix colors, rather than mixing them fully on the canvas. This effect is called optical mixing, and can enhance your painting in many ways. You will learn:

• what is optical mixing, and how it works
• the difference between triadic, complementary, and analogous optical mixing
• how to make effective use of an imprimatura to create an optical mixing effect, and what pitfalls to avoid when using this approach
• when to use a warm and when to use a cool imprimatura
• how to create an optical mixing effect when you are working directly (using the wet-in-wet mixing approach)
• how to achieve optical mixing by using washes
• how to build up a painting in layers to create an optical mixing effect and to make the surface of the painting more interesting
• how Monet captured the effect of light in his “series” paintings

Total number of assignments: 4

Total number of pages: 19