Southeast Whitesburg Mural--14 Getting it right

When one paints three dimensional objects on a two dimensional (flat) surface, one needs to manipulate the hue, value and intensity of color to make the objects appear three dimensional to the viewer.

Forbes Whiteside had an exercise that taught students that one has to not only change value (light and dark) but also hue and intensity, to reproduce a three dimensional object. He gave us wooden cubes (about 3"x3"x3"), had us choose a color that we liked and mix up a batch of that one color with which we would paint the entire cube on all sides with the same solid color. When the paint was dry, we set the cube on the table on a neutral colored backdrop. The task was then to paint a picture on our canvas that looked just like our cube did sitting on the table. The most interesting thing about this task was that you almost never got to use any of the original color you used to paint the cube in the first place. The effects of light, shadow, reflected color, and dimension, all required you to use colors lighter and darker (value), bluer/greener/redder (he), and grayer (intensity) than your original color.

It is both the perspective (the lines converging) and the use of color that makes the Allied Health Building appear three dimensional. I finished the bricks today, and will move on to windows and doors this week.

As I came in this morning, I stopped and took a new photo of the Administration/Coca-Cola building, that I could use as reference for painting the stone work on that building. Below you see a portion of the building as it appeared this morning, and below that you see, today's painting of the stone work on the building.



I wasn't sure how the stone work would look until I tried it, and I kept having to get down off the scaffold to get some distance to make sure that what I was doing was creating the right effect. I think it worked pretty well.

Here's the overview of today's work: