Succinct, by Tracey Maras
By Tracey Maras
www.traceymaras.com
There it sits, all along, untouched, forgotten. The white pastel. Rarely does a white pastel ever get used in any of my paintings. Maybe as a final touch in the center of the sun, but rarely at any other time.
The problem with a white pastel is that it really doesn’t add much to a painting. It’s flat and devoid of color. It does read as cool. But for the most part, it is lifeless in a painting.
While I may look at a white subject, like a house, a shirt, or an animal, and automatically think “white,” there really is very little true white present. However, white is highly reflective of the colors around it. Outdoors, white in shadow may appear a mid-value blue, being influenced by the color of the sky. White near another color source may shift to the green of sunlit grass or red from a painted barn reflecting onto nearby snow. In sunlight, white shifts slightly warmer to a creamy yellow.
It takes practice and patience to train your eyes and brain to recognize the infinite color variations that exist in a white element in your painting. There are a couple of ways to help the process along.
One of the easiest ways, if working from a reference photo, is to turn the photo upside-down. By taking the scene out of context, it is much easier to discover colors that were previously unnoticed.
Another approach when working from a photo is a “color isolator.” Using a small piece of white paper, cut a small ¼” hole in the center. Lay the color isolator flat on the photo to isolate colors, making them easier to identify in terms of color and value. Or if working from an electronic device, zoom in on the photo and you can identify individual pixels of color. You’ll soon discover that few, if any, of the colors are actually true white.
Leaving the white pastel to languish can result in more colorful and engaging paintings.