Study Sheet, Chapter 4
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Art Appreciation
Study Sheet II – Chapter 4, Light and Color
Vocabulary:
Value –
the lightness or darkness of tones or colors.
Chiaroscuro – Italian word meaning “light-dark”; the graduations of light and dark values in
two-dimensional art
Modeling –
in drawing and painting, the effect of light falling on an object so that the illusion
of its mass is created and defined by value graduations; modeling a common
type of chiaroscuro.
Tenebrism – from Latin meaning “gloomy darkness”; a style of painting strong contrast of light
and dark.
Highlight –
the area of brightest light on an object.
Spectrum –
all the visible colors by the size of their wavelengths.
Hue –
that property of color identifying a specific named wavelength of light; often used
synonymously with color.
Pigments –
the substance that imparts color in paints
Color Wheel – the placement of the colors in the spectrum into a circle order.
Primary colors – those hues that cannot be produced by mixing other hues.
Primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.
Secondary colors – the colors produced by combining two primary colors.
Secondary colors are green, violet, and orange.
Tertiary or intermediate colors – the colors produced by mixing a primary and a secondary
color; for example, mixing blue and green results in blue-green.
Complementary colors – colors that are directly opposite each other in the color wheel
and provide the greatest contrast;
for example red is the complement of green, yellow to violet, and blue to orange.
Analogous colors – a color scheme in which colors that are next to/beside one another on the
color wheel are used; for example, red, red-orange, and orange are analogous.
Study Sheet, Chapter 4
Tint –
Adding white to a color produces a tint of that color.
Shade –
Adding black to a color produces a shade of that color.
Intensity –
refers to the quality or purity (brilliance or saturation) of the hue.
Neutrals –
(not associated with a single hue); a neutral can be made by mixing
complementary colors; blacks, whites, grays, and dull gray-browns; earth-tones.
Warm colors – colors whose relative visual temperature makes them seem warm;
red-violet, red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, and yellow.
Cool colors – colors whose relative visual temperature makes them seem cool;
green, blue-green, blue, blue-violet, and violet.
Study questions:
1.
If the light source is in front of an object the cast shadow falls behind the object.
2.
A silhouette is created by having the light source behind an object.
3.
The hue or color we see is the wavelength of that color reflected from the object while
all other wavelengths are absorbed.
4.
Peter Paul Rubens painted reflected colors in his work (Figure 4-24), color as the eye sees it,
called optical color.
5.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting, Self-portrait with Model (Figure 4-17), is primarily done in
complementary colors.
6.
Milton Avery’s, Clear Cut Landscape (Figure 4-18), is done in an analogous color scheme.
7.
Nicolas Poussin painted colors he knew objects to be without effects, known as local color.
(Figure 4-26)
8.
Warm colors seem to project forward in artworks; cool colors seem to recede.
9.
The Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin (Figure 4-28) raised the values of all his colors and
painted in what has been called high key.
10.
The two properties of light are lightness and color.
11.
The relative lightness or darkness of an area is value.
12.
The graduation of light and dark in art is called chiaroscuro.
13.
The dark shape that is cast onto another surface when a mass interrupts a light source
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Study Sheet, Chapter 4
is a shadow.
14.
Baroque artists Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi (Figure 4-6) employed strong contrast
between light and dark. This is called Tenebrism.
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