Color Temperature: Clicking into Place?

 

2/15/25 orange/blue only
(all exercises done with Prismacolors in Stillman &Birn Zeta sketchbook)

In the second session of Sarah Bixler’s class, Sarah gave us a lengthy demo of her portraiture style using color temperature as the focus. As I had felt in her earlier workshops, I’m both intrigued and perplexed at the same time, and I jumped into the homework eagerly.

Two challenges collided: The first was the same as in the initial exercise (when we focused only on values by using black) – the difficulty of “painting” only the abstract value shapes instead of rendering with a contour line. The second challenge was simultaneously paying attention to color temperature and its relativity.

Assigned to draw three portraits using reference images of our choice, I went to my favorite portrait go-to, Earthsworld, for two. For the first (at right), we were to use only orange and blue for the color temperature range. The gradient under the portrait shows the range from warm (pure orange) to cool (pure blue) and everything in between. The middle of the gradient bar should be close to a neutral gray.

A trick I used was to first identify the coolest area (his shirt) and the warmest areas (the sunlit side of his face near the highlight) and make those pure blue and pure orange. From there, as I moved around the drawing, I kept asking, Is this spot warmer than the shirt? Cooler than the sunlit side of his face? I’m not sure whether she would recommend this tactic, but it seemed to help me.

For the second exercise, we were to begin with brown (warm) and black (cool) to establish values first. After that was done, we added orange and blue to indicate temperature more clearly. This version was easier for me because I could look at values without confusing the issue with hue (below). I remembered to take a photo right after I made the initial block-in of “value shapes” – so challenging without drawing a contour line! But it does help to hold the pencil loosely and use the broad side of the point so that color goes on as widely as possible – like paint.

"Value shapes" during initial block-in

2/16/25 Brown/black used first to establish values

The last exercise (below) – similar to the first except using burnt ochre (warm) and peacock green (cool) – I had to laugh through most of it! Sarah had suggested using a selfie for one, so I chose a very unflattering, harshly lighted photo with a three-quarter view that I find especially daunting. I actually thought the unflattering photo might help me to abstract the shapes more easily! HA! I’ll tell you what was helpful, though: For the initial block-in, I turned the reference photo upside-down!

2/18/25 burnt ochre and peacock green (Brownie points for me
that I even turned this one in!)

Although that last one was painful and humbling, that’s when things started to click into place for me. In the first one, I felt like I was automatically thinking of blue as “darker” than orange and relying on it to darken the values without regard to temperature, which then confused me. As you can see from the gradient bar that I converted to grayscale below, in reality, both orange and blue are about the same value (in fact, the whole gradient is). By the time I got to the selfie, I started “seeing” that darker areas can be warm, and lighter areas can be cool – temperature is not the same as values. Holy heck, am I really starting to get it??

I remember sort of arriving at this point toward the end of her previous workshops, but without more practice and feedback, it felt slippery, and I was never confident that I understood enough to internalize what I learned. I hope that the remaining three classes will help me solidify what feels like I’m just beginning to grasp.

Orange/blue gradient from first exercise converted to grayscale