BY CARL GORDON CtPfLER AND STEPHEN C. PEPPER CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY. PRESS LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1923 COPYRIGHT, 1923 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Table of Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. THE IMPORTANCE OF A COLOR TECHNIQUE 3 II. SOME GENERAL FACTS ABOUT COLOR 12 in. CUTLERS COLOR SCALE 30 IV. PAINTING IN STUDIO LIGHT CUTLERS TECHNIQUE 6j V. REFLECTED LIGHT 80 VI. OTHER SPECIAL PROBLEMS 98 VH. PAINTING IN WEAK AND STRONG LIGHT lOp VIII. OUT OF DOOR PAINTING 121 IX. WIDER APPLICATIONS OF CUTLER S SCALE 138 X. COLOR SCHEMES 147 APPENDIX I 157 APPENDIX II l62 MODERN COLOR Chapter i THE IMPORTANCE OF A COLOR TECHNIQUE JL H E aim of this book is to explain in a simple and compact way a method of painting color. It is a method now being used with great success by a number of art ists, and it is so easy of mastery and so mechanically accurate that it seems a pity it should not be shared with all artists. The method has nothing to do with a mans style of painting and is adaptable to any style that undertakes to paint light as it is. The art student spends a great deal of time in the schools learning how to draw accurately, how to copy exactly the shape of 4 A COLOR TECHNIQUE an object before him. When the student leaves the school he may for one reason or another modify what he has learned there or disregard it, but he will do this not through ignorance but in order to obtain some other end. And the fact that the artist does know what good drawing is will show all through his work no matter how much he may apparently disregard it. It will save him at least from making unnecessary blun ders. Every artist no matter what his style may turn out to be, even a cubist, perhapsmost of all a cubist, ought to know how to draw accurately. In the same way every artist ought to know how to paint light accurately. Every artist ought to know how to get exactly the correct highlight, and exactly the correct shadow. He ought to know just what to do when the light is made more intense or less intense, or when the model is moved from studio light into sunlight. He ought to know how to get exactly the correct color for his reflected lights, how to look for these and how to control them. It is a method for doing just these things that we are going to explain in this book. But are not these things taught in the schools Yes, in some degree lately but with a deficient technique. It is astonishing how false the eye plays one in matters of color. A student in a prominent art school was paint ing a model with red hair. He put in the proper red dish yellow for the local color of the hair, raised the color to a tint for the highlight, and lowered it to a shade for the shadow. But it looked dull and lifeless. Yet he had painted it as nearly as he could as he saw it. When the master came round, the student complained of the effect. It is rather tame, isnt it said the master, and taking a brush he filled it with violet and touched up the shadows here and there. The hair im mediately leaped into vitality. How did you know that was the thing to do asked the student. Only by experience, was the reply. Only by experience. That is just the trouble. When the student comes to paint red hair again, he will know what to do. But what will he do to obtain the same vitality in black hair and golden hair and white hair He must find a separate rule for each. That means trying and trying again, scraping with the palette knife and trying again. The colors will inevitably go muddy and the artists spontaneity will be gone. There is no one simple rule that can be applied. Each change of lighting, and each slight alteration of color, creates a new problem that has to be solved anew. When is one to make cold shadows, is a question students are constantly asking, and the only answer has been, experience. In all 6 A COLOR TECHNIQUE these matters the young art student is left totally with out guide or support...