It takes many elements to create attractive, eye catching, one of a kind pieces of artwork. I feel that light and color are two of the more important factors that really bring art alive. Art comes alive in many forms, shapes, sizes, and yes, colors. Color and light gives depth, style, it sets a mood, awakens your imagination and expands your sense of being. Color and light gives way to forms and shapes that set the senses.
The Impressionists were concerned with capturing the effect of color and light. They banished black and earth colors from the palettes and used the pure colors of the visible spectrum and the effects of light itself to create many other depths, colors, and hues. They dabble colors to mix them, now mixing them, not mixing them before placement on the canvas. This gave a wide range of colors that are the combinations of color vibrations.
tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell'...
English: Studies of Embryos by Leonardo da Vinci (...Light and color help us distinguish many aspects in a painting. The many aspects being distance, clarity, weather, time, and moods. Light and color are what give life to an otherwise dull painting. The colors make a certain aspects pop out or blend in. As in Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks, here you see color and light used very well. This painting is on page 115 in the A World of Art book. Color and Light use in the foreground catches your eye and keeps it focused on the main part of the painting. If you look closely you see the use of colors to set a mood. It seems to be early morning or late evening: the color tones, shadowing, and softness of the painting seem to help depict this. If you notice that certain elements of the bodies in the painting tend to...