Online Art Mini Lesson 8
"LOCAL COLOR" and
it's Relationship to FORM

An Online Art Lesson from Interactive Art School. This and the other Online Art Lessons are for your enjoyment and a hint of what you will receive in the for-profit 6 Lesson/10 Textbook/6 Personal Critique Full Art Course

LOCAL COLOR:

An object has several attributes that an artist must understand to properly render it realistically in a drawing or painting.

• Form

• Local color

• The lights that illuminate the object

• and many others we'll get to in other lessons

Let's take an apple apart into these elements, focusing here on the effect of "LOCAL COLOR".

The ANATOMY of the Underlying FORM of the Apple is shown in the diagram below:

(These images are computer generated to demonstrate the principles involved.)

Once we establish the underlying form, we must then apply the LOCAL COLOR, in this case – the apple’s skin. This idea is a MENTAL EXERCISE, a demonstration of the principles. The old masters on the other hand actually working this way. They did an "UNDERPAINTING" in black , white and grays or in dark brown (UMBER) and black and white tinted into the Umber paint. The resulting "Underpainting" was a monochrome image (one color with tints of the color) much like a black and white photograph. They then varnished the underpainting so they could proceed with the "OVERPAINTING" – where they applied color tints. If you did this apple in underpainting/ overpainting technique, after you completed the black, white and gray apple to the left above, you would paint the color apple skin on top of the black, white and gray apple, adding the bluish tints from the left hand window light.

With the local color added - we have a realistic apple:

The idea here is to have you understand the different aspects separately in your learning process.

These principles underlie all objects.

This page a sample of the Interactive Art Schools ON-THE-WEB teaching. One of the school's tools is it's unique use of WEB & computer variations which can make principles clearer than a flat printed textbook or sketches in chalk on a blackboard. So we supplement the course text books with on-the-web lessons and lesson supplements like this (All registered students get 10 text books in their Sign Up Kit).

End of Online Lesson #8 "LOCAL COLOR and it's Relationship to FORM"

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