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DIRTY COLOUR DIRT has been well defined as " matter out of place" and this is singularly true in the case of colour. If we are dealing only with light and shade, we find that the presence of too much dark on the light surfaces, and of too much light in places which should be dark, produces an effect of dirtiness. The more patchy and irregular these false lights and darks are, the dirtier will be the effect. The removal of these patches will clean up the work most wonderfully. In colour the sense of dirtiness is generally due to a failure to observe the natural order. The presence of dark yellow or yellow-brown in a space devoted to light reds, pinks, greens, or blues usually produces the effect of dirtiness. One of the commonest examples of this occurs in painting from life. A passage of delicate, warm grey in which touches of a dark yellow (or brownish) colour have been allowed to appear will surely look dirty. Touches of red, darker than their surroundings, placed in a cool, bluish-grey half-tone will look dirty. At the first glance this statement appears to clash with the well-known principle in flesh-painting : " Keep your shadows warm and your lights cool " ; but, if we will take the trouble carefully to distinguish one passage from another, we shall find that yellows are backed by reds or greens a little darker than themselves, and that the reds are in turn supported by purple-reds, while the greens tend to blue. Cold high-lights on warm yellows or reds, and delicate, cool grey or bluish edges of halftones supply the slight but necessary discords. In considering so difficult and delicate a question as this, one must remember that a light passage and a dark passage may each be complete in itself. One finds in certain dark complexions, it may be on the forehead and temple, delicate yellows deepening towards green, but all in a very light key, while close by, in the shadow of the jaw, will be dark yellows, much deeper than the green in the light passage. Examination will show that the dark yellows in the dark passage are backed by olive or green, or even blue-black, darker than themselves. This principle enables us to understand how different masters of painting, with widely divergent tastes in colour, may yet work on the same foundation. Rubens, as we know, said, " Paint your lights yellow and your shadows red ; afterwards, with a brush dipped in cool grey, go over the half-tones." The late John Pettie, who, in his advice to students, devoted himself solely to colour, used to say, cc Paint your shadows yellow, for the reflected lights are full of it." Each was right in his own way, though Rubens saw farther, and based his advice on a more profound knowledge. Whatever considerations of luminosity may have prompted certain great painters to employ reds in the deep shadows of flesh, there can be no doubt that the presence of these dark reds helps greatly to put the dark golds in place without having recourse to blue, and, consequently, without cutting up the effect so seriously. Careful attention to the natural order will assist greatly in getting " breadth " of colour. The practice, so common of late years, of introducing many different colours into every portion of a painting and into every tint, however sober, is fraught with great danger to breadth, for in the hands of anyone but a great master the various colours are almost certain to slip out of their proper order and so neutralize the effect by appearing dirty. The beautiful sparkle and subtle gradation, which should have been among the great qualities of the picture, are replaced by a harsh, metallic glitter, with violent changes from point to point, while, worse than all, one is offended by patches undeniably " dirty." Students will find that by practising fine and slow gradations of colour in its true order they can dispense with the multiplicity of varied tints, obtaining thereby quite as rich an effect with a much more powerful and dignified handling. When this method has been mastered, it will be an easy matter to get broken colour where it is needed, and to add the necessary discords without harshness. Dirty colour is much in evidence in different kinds of patterned materials. Cottons and silks, carpets and wallpapers, are often to be found suffering from this bad fault. The most common cause is the wrong use of greens and browns. If we divide greens into two classes, warm and cool, we can easily analyse them. Warm greens contain more yellow, and frequently some red, while cool greens contain more blue. The warm greens, therefore, belong to the upper end of the scale and the cool greens to the lower. If we make our warm greens deeper than the cool, we reverse the natural order and produce a discord. It is quite common to find a mass of light, cool green with large spaces of dark, warm green side by side with it, and the result is unpleasant, both colours suffering. In the same way dark, warm browns are often used with light and rather cool greens, the result being that the greens become cold and dead while the browns become hot and sometimes perfectly bilious. If the browns are cooled down—blue added to their composition will effect this—the result is less objectionable. The nearer the discordant colours are brought to neutral grey the more nearly do they become harmonious, but the student must take warning that it is fatally easy to make greys look dirty by neglecting the natural order. Many a tint which ought to be quite silvery only succeeds in looking cold and dowdy because the foil chosen for it has been taken from the wrong end of the scale. The free use of pale blue or blue-grey, side by side with deeper tints of green, red, or yellow-brown, is almost certain to result in making these other colours look dirty. To sum up, one may say that dirty colour is usually the result of using dark discords, i.e., tints darker in relation to their surroundings than they should be according to the natural order. It is, of course, quite possible to use dark discords deliberately when it is desired to place dark spots upon a light, cool ground, but it must be done with moderation and with great judgment. Continued on this page |