Ray painted a studio demo this morning of an 8x10 seascape. He worked out his composition beforehand in photoshop using a photo he took and then redesigned it a bit to create a pleasing design. Ray spoke a little bit about the color white and how we perceive its hue shifts as it vanishes into the horizon. He also talked about why he paints his initial sketch in with a neutral color and also how the works of William Ritschel influenced him over the years.
We discussed warm vs. cool paintings and the possibility of why we as artists gravitate toward one or the other. Mark Daniel Nelson mentioned that there is a bit of bias toward the bluer color schemes with the northern Europeans. Mark thinks he may have a red cone mutation because he gravitates toward cooler paintings. Interesting!
We also had another discussion on the cones in our eyes and how they are thought to be RGB sensitive (over CMYK). Mark brought up an article from the New York Times that covered a story on how Pantone chooses the colors of the year for artists, fashion designers, decorators, etc. There's a Pantone color test called the "Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue Color Vision Test" where Pantone employees have to identify over 100 shades of colors. I had read the article also. It's worth to check it out if you haven't already. You can find it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/magazine/what-is-the-perfect-color-worth.html. To get more interesting tidbits, tips and tools, you'll have to watch the video.
The LIVE demo recording was available to our participants to watch for a limited time. The viewing time has since expired. If you missed the LIVE demo, no worries--we'll have it available for purchase in our "Streaming Videos" section on our website soon.