Making and Using Color Notes

Making “Color Notes” is an approach I use to record color information. Sometimes I use it when my camera isn’t able to accurately represent what I’m seeing with my eyes. Sometimes I use it to just “actively see” what I’m looking at, if I the photo is good— to take note of details that interest me and hunt for nuance. I generally use it when I don’t have time to paint something, but I find the subject compelling. I don’t know what other people call it, but that’s the name I gave it! :D

If you’re interested in the exercise of deeply “looking with your eyes” and paying attention to what you’re experiencing, this can pay real dividends— both in your paintings and in how you see the world on a daily basis. Almost no one starts out being sensitive to the nuances of color relationships. You have to train yourself. “Looking” and recording (to the best of your abilities) what you’re seeing if how you exercise that muscle.

Already make color notes? Let me know you do so and how you use them in the comments below. Curious about this practice? Read on intrepid explorer!

The Limits of Cameras

Cameras, in my opinion, are very good at representing the relationship of shapes stacked and arranged in space, but they’re not objective. They often gently distort color and value, have a color shift or “personality”, oversaturate things, etc. compared to how our own two excellent, built-in cameras see things. This is particularly so if your subject has strong opposing colors, or content with a high dynamic range— skies, cloudscapes, sunrises and sunsets, etc.— but it also works for darker scenes, where color information gets lost in photos. Moody redwood forest scenes, for example.

Besides that, we experience color in context. Color contrasts, complimentary neutrals, value shifts, etc. are all things we experience individually, in our mind. I’ve never cared for the color-matching approach of visually isolating details to accurately represent their hues. How an object expresses color in context is far more representative of how we experience the world. Which is what I’m interested in bringing in to my art.

Examples of Color Notes and How I Use Them

The technique, for me, is very simple. After I take a photo, if I’m dissatisfied with the color results or I am particularly excited by the color relationships I see, I dictate to my phone what I’m experiencing. In each example below, I include the dictated text, full of typos and everything. Dictation has its limits. Hahahaha. But it gets the idea across.

Example 1- Tree with cast shadows

The tree is warm it has almost no actual highlights on it. The highlights are a pale warm gray if anything. The cat shadows on the trunk are brighter on the right (which is the direction of the light) and darker on the left. The shadows are a little bit limy where there’s moss on the right and they are a darker blue green on the left. In the actual sunlight the moss is very pale yellow. Perhaps just as light as the highlights on the trunk of the tree. They’re a little highlights from the branches that are catching the sunlight across the path of the shadows. They’re basically a pure white. Occasionally they have a little bit of orange in them. The sun lit leaves are not actually yellow. There really a clean spring green. Maybe chartreuse at most. In the shadows the leaves are like a sap green, but they are actually lighter than the cash shadows on the trunk itself.

Below you can see the photo versus the final painting. The photo is an excellent tool for recording incidental information- branches and leaves, structure and shapes. I use it for that to the best of my ability. But I let color be dictated by my notes. I would have loved to have painted this on site, but I had already finished a day of plein air painting and was hiking back to my car. Plus, lighting effects like this are super transient and hard to capture plein air- everything would have been different by the time I set up my paints.

Example 2- Vibrant sunrise above marshes

In this example, I not only dictate what I see in terms of color, but I also notate to myself how I would paint it. Here, I was on my way to the dump, and just pulled over the truck. No time to paint, that’s for sure! :P

The upper sky is definitely a pale blue, and the sunlit bottom of the clouds is an orange yellow. Striped through it are the shadows which are a purple gray. Like gray plum color. Things look different through the windshield. Warmer. Far away silhouettes of mountains are a gray purple. The dark foreground and mid- ground are warm with muted pale brown highlights for the grass. There’s a bit of blue in the reflections on the water from the upper sky. Ripples on the water are pale blue from the upper sky, not dark, like you would expect.

I would need to paint the pale blue sky in a wash that would descend into the super vibrant orange. I could continue that underneath and down into the water reflections. Wet into wet, but late in the game, I could drop in the gray purple shadows into the orange. There were little drops of highlighted clouds up above in Orange, but they would need to be painted later after it’s dried because they have a hard edge. After everything dries, you would need to paint the mountains, but what’s unclear is how opaque they would really be. You might need to use some gouache, mixed in with your watercolors. Hard edges for the grasses in the foreground and around the lagoon would be useful. Ripples on the water would either need to be painted negatively or you would have to drop in a sky blue mix with white dry on dry with dry brush work.

Example 3- High Sierra Sunset

For this one, I didn’t have time to paint the sunset when it was happening. But the next day I came back to paint at the right time, and a similar experience unfolded. If I were to paint it again, I would use these notes to lead me.

The sky descends to a pale ruddy orange behind the mountains. There’s a dark blue grey shadow cast across the lower portion of th e landscape from the left- a mountain off stage? The giant cast shadows is more distinct on the left and softer and lower on the right. The tall mountain in back is paler than this, but the top of it is actually darker than the middle. The top is a ruddy plum color, and under it is a paler orange-yellow band descending into the grey-blue. The foreground is all muted green-yellows, in shadow. When I look at it, where the dark black cattle are, the mountains are much more vibrant in context.