• Special message: Join us tomorrow, Sunday-September 17, at 2 PM Eastern for our monthly live chat on YouTube. The topic is What's Warm? What's Cool? • ALSO-Yesterday a space opened up in the Harnessing Warm and Cool Workshop next week - Wednesday, Sept 20, at 11 AM Eastern. If you tried to grab a spot after it closed, now's your chance. We can use the gradation tool to make elements change from one characteristic to another. The results we get from gradating are opposite those we get from contrasting. Whereas contrasting produces a comparison of
differences, gradating produces a transition. The top band of color is the result of gradating the hue blue to the hue green. The bottom one is the result of contrasting blue and green. In addition, we can gradate intensity from fully saturated to
neutral. Gradating is what enabled Rembrandt to show shadow moving into light on the red garments in Two Old Men Disputing, and what gave Dali the ability to show rounded shapes in Playing in the Dark. The gradation tool can be used with almost all the elements, just like the contrast tool can. It can be used with size to show a fence and road moving into distance, it can be use with texture to show a busy texture up close getting smoother as it goes into distance. And the neat thing is that the contrast tool can be
used to create the gradation of texture. Look at how all this results in the photo below. Of all the composing tools we use in painting, the gradating and contrasting tools are our most used workhorses. They enable all the others to do their jobs.
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Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
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During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
You can access the archive of all my newsletters (as well as the Quick Tips and other stuff) at any time by going HERE.
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