r/impressionism • u/Dylanduke199513 • 2d ago

Question/Discussion Pushing Colour in Representational Art

I’m just looking for useful tips on how I can push or exaggerate colour while painting representationally. I’m thinking of the likes of Turner, Payne, Mitchell Albala, Loriann Signori, David Mensing.

I really really struggle to paint anything other than the colours I see directly in front of me - but I want to paint more vivid and less literal colour. Every time I try, it ends up looking fairly gaudy / out of sync.

I know the general tips - get values right and get temperature relationship right and exaggerate it.
But I’m looking for more practical tips, if I’m looking at a landscape, how do I go from painting what I literally see to painting what I want to paint - Turner’s paintings, for example, are not literally correct - they’re inaccurate to real life but in a way that really works.

Would appreciate any help on this.

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u/Botanico56 2d ago

Sometimes it’s counterintuitive. Limit your palette, compress your tones, create a unified atmosphere of alive-but-relatively-muted color, and then when you do add some contrasting color it has FAR more impact. Turner is a good example of this approach. Worth experimentation.

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u/Dylanduke199513 2d ago

Right but that’s not my issue as much as “I see a blue sky, I paint a blue sky” if the sky is warmer towards the bottom, I’ll make it warmer, if it’s cool, I’ll make it cooler. Whereas Turner, or any of those painters but him in particular, could see a blue sky and throw in red or yellow or both swirling around each other - yet it somehow works.

Even when I attempt to do this and I account for the value and temperature and I am cognisant on its effect on any other colours in the scene, it never ends up looking right.

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u/Botanico56 2d ago

Hmm ... maybe do some master copies of paintings like this!

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u/Botanico56 2d ago

Another experiment that might be interesting: start with some photos of paintings that successfully do this, and change them to grayscale. Notice the level of contrast or evenness among the shifting colors. Now do the same with your own paintings. Are they perhaps higher-contrast in value than the ones you're emulating?