Friday, July 17, 2015

Squinting and Looking Elsewhere



This 9x12 painting I started last week and completed yesterday morning, going again to the same spot at the same time.  I just kept squinting the whole time in order to see the landscape.  I also experienced that if you look at something for a while like the stream, it loses its color, but if you look elsewhere for a few moments, and then suddenly look at the stream, the color comes back.  Emile Gruppe, in his book on color, writes about that, and now I believe him.  

Here's what he said, "The longer you stare at an area, the grayer it gets.  Your eye becomes used to the color; it fatigues; your sense of color dies.  The only way to judge the color of an object is to compare it with the color of objects near it... That's why I constantly move my eyes over a scene, comparing values and colors.  If I'm stumped by an area, I work on another spot; then, when I turn back to the troublesome place, I'm usually able to see the color."

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