After some more in-depth research into lighting and colour theory I now know why complementary colours work together so well and I am quite certain that I will benefit from this knowledge in future artwork. I summarised the acquired knowledge into the following to paragraphs by describing the background story of discoveries about light very briefly and go on to its use in art.
Newton’s scientific discoveries set
the foundation for modern colour theory, as thanks to him the modern colour wheel was born.
Michel Chevreul then discovered that an intense dye colour would produce the appearance
of its complementary colour on surrounding neutral areas. Eugene Delacroix was
the first artist to make use of this information and found out through close
lighting and colour observation that a colour’s shadow contains its
complementary colour. The impressionist artists’ soon began to implement this into
their art to create realistic lighting effects. This is why impressionists supported
the idea of using colours for shadows and avoiding the use of black in their paintings
when possible, which lead to more vibrant paintings and a clear distinction
from the up until then extreme rendered and artificially lit studio work.
The chance to avoid studio work and
properly observe lighting and colour in real life day situations was made
possible through the invention of portable painting sets, which is one of the
main reasons why the impressionist movement originated at this time. En plein air became the impressionists’ trademark and their close observations of
light and atmosphere, especially in combination with the passage of time like
sunsets, made clear that light was observed differently than before. Scenes
were captured in their painting through small but visible brush strokes due to
the quickness of the paintings, but retained certain softness in tones,
especially inside individual objects to avoid the as before mentioned black colour
and extreme rendering.
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