Episode 11: Mark Eanes
Today I’m talking with artist and professor Mark Eanes. And we’re hitting a few subjects but MOSTLY we are focusing in on color. Eanes will explain the basics of color, the various characteristics of color and color relationships...and why it all matters. Eanes gives a ton of great examples of exercises he has his students do. You are going to have so many ideas for practicing color after this conversation.
If you’re new to color, let’s talk color for a minute:
Three Guiding Principles of Color
Color has three characteristics we can use to define any specific color. The reason why it’s useful to learn to think in these terms is because it gives you a language to talk about color, to describe what you see and what you want to get when you are mixing color.
Hue- The color.
Value - How light or dark
Saturation - How bright. A Cadmium red straight from the tube is highly saturated. If you added its opposite, green, then you would lower its saturation until eventually it was grey.
Categories of Color
Eanes talks about categories of color. These terms may be a bit different than you are used to and they are an incredibly useful way to categorize color.
Prismatic Hues -
These are your colors at their most saturated. Think colors straight from the tube.
Muted colors -
These are saturated colors quieted down a bit. You can mute colors by adding white, grey, black or the color’s opposite.
Chromatic Greys-
These are muted colors quieted down even more. More white, more grey, more black or more of the color’s complement. If you’ve listened to the podcast you’ve heard other artists talked about these as neutrals.
In the interview, Eanes talks about:
2:15 How Mark got into art
4:22 What being classically trained gave him
7:22 What attracted him to abstract art?
8:56 COLOR: What’s important to understand about color
14:23 How color knowledge can help you get the color you want
Color as light
The spectrum of the rainbow
Warm and cool colors
17:01 Color strategies
Guiding principles of hue, value and saturation
18:33 Why are color strategies useful
25:42 Why is it important to keep it simple in the beginning?
29:42 Why people avoid color theory
32:37 How understanding the vocabulary of art is helpful
34:00 The usefulness of practicing color on its own
38:01 The freedom of letting go
42:30 Why understanding color is important for an artist
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