Method: determining the color of the sky

Leifer

Senior Member.
I have come up with a way to "more correctly" determine the color of the sky.
Through my career of painting skies, one problem has been the ability to correctly determine the true color of the sky.....if it is wanted to be accurate.

I made a video......


Note, here is my "about" description of the YouTube vid....

As a painter, I often paint skies. Often it is hard to determine the true color of the sky. I have come up with a method to help in this situation.
I'm not sure if this method has been described before, but I thought of it while day-dreaming one day......and.thinking "outside the box", so-to-speak.

Please excuse my video color inaccuracy....the camera had a prior White Balance setting, and it is not accurate. But in this instance, it is the method I am describing, and color accuracy is not necessarily all that important, to show the method.
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so when I take that sunlit mirror color and put it on my ceiling what would you say 4 ehades lighter or more?

and on canvas on my vertical wall (moderate light) like 2?
 
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My ("somewhat less than "vast" experience) of using paint for....oh, let's say, painting your house interior walls? Still....I've learned a lot.

Color perception varies A LOT depending on the ambient lighting conditions, and of course, individual Human personal perception.

Just my $0.02.

('IF' I might add? In the concept of, say, "scale modeling"....of which I'm fairly adept...when you wish to paint a reduced-scale model to represent the "real thing", you must take into account aspects of perspective, perception and the various and sundry interpretations of "color" that can vary greatly, from person to person).

I think, in all.....it's about "perception" mostly, with a dash of "memory" tossed in......

Editing....when painting scale models, we often must resort to a kind of 're-creation' of distance, in order to make the small model appear similar to the "Full-Scale" representation. Hence, the use of "scale-black", as one example. This is basic black paint, with an addition of red...and even tiny amounts of white (the white interacts with the black to cause it to "gray" a bit...the red helps to 'diffuse' the effect).
 
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I've painted several skies on home ceilings. It depends on the amount of un-natural or natural light that the ceiling will receive. If there is little (or ambient) light, like in a basement......I would lighten the color a shade or two.
If the color is on a vertical wall....I would keep the color "as suggested" by the real sky.
Off topic.....interior sky colors are often too "vibrant".....and a slightly muddier color seems more natural. A bright sky is fantastic for a while when first seen, but a more subdued sky color is better over the long-haul, if you will be living with it for some years.
 
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Nice. Have you seen Tim's Vermeer? He uses a related technique to replicate a Vermeer painting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim's_Vermeer

That is an interesting link, Mick...although it seems we must watch a video. I am not averse to ANY Penn & Teller video, in fact I avidly seek them. Did I miss a link, somewhere?

Thanks in advance.

Edit....I can figure it out, I suppose...please ignore the foregoing. 2nd 'edit'...am "running" to NetFlix to schedule that disc!!! Thnx!

"Speaking" (pun) of 'Penn & Teller':
 
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I'll look Mick.....I just ordered it, to view the film. (Amazon)
lol I love the trailer 'I wanted to paint a vermeer but figured that's impossible cause im not a painter' < I can relate.

this clip gives you some insight. kinda cool method.
 
Nice. Have you seen Tim's Vermeer? He uses a related technique to replicate a Vermeer painting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim's_Vermeer

It is a very interesting documentary considering Tim is an odd person who spent 5 years reproducing a Vermeer. Assuming Vermeer would have taken the same amount of time for each painting it seems like there might be some bunk in Tim's Vermeer. For one, Vermeer did portraits of people; how would he have posed them in exactly the same way for months or years on end to use the camera obscura and mirror method as his only system? Perhaps he used the technique to produce a photograph-like sketch and actually had a very good eye for colour for completing the painting. Sometimes engineers like Tim can be quite annoying in assuming that artistic skills must always be reduced to analytics.
 
In 2001, the artist David Hockney published Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters,* a book which lays out his theoretical history of the use of optics in art. Hockney believes that, beginning in the 15th century, artists used lenses, mirrors, and cameras (both lucidas and obscuras) to make their extraordinarily realistic paintings. He cites the sudden development of a more true-to-life style in painted faces which occured around 1430 as partial proof of his theory and maintains that even those artists who did not use the new technology to create their images altered the way they painted as a result of how optics changed the artform.
http://www.gwennseemel.com/index.php/blog/comments/tracing/
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The artist James Turrell very often uses natural sky light to "color" a room......allowing natural light to enter the space, via an opening somewhere in the room. The ambient reflections, basically "color" the room.
http://jamesturrell.com/

About tracing....
I had a toy, as a kid.......It's not the same as Tim's Vermeer project, but still interesting, and so simple.


20121017-150929.jpg reflection_copy.jpg
http://mentalfloss.com/article/55417/10-awesome-100-year-old-crafts-kids

...and another gadget...

obscura_art.jpg
 
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The artist James Turrell very often uses natural sky light to "color" a room......
Yeah.....I know.

Look....I (as probably many of the current readers right now) have owned a home. SEVERAL homes, in fact. Choosing paint colors from tiny swatches? A "guess" at best. Come on, we ALL have been there....n'est pas???

ALSO.....when we 'paint' a wall (as example) IT looks TOTALLY different when 'wet' than when it "dries". Again.....I have MANY decades' experience as a scale model builder, so I know a lot about color perception.
 
....good to know, WeedWhacker. I paint scale models !!
Yes, choosing paint colors from small swatches is not so cut-and-dry, it takes some experience (and several mistakes) to be able to pick a 1"x2" swatch that will look like what you want, when the wall is 10' x 20'.....or larger.
 
....good to know, WeedWhacker. I paint scale models !!
Yes, choosing paint colors from small swatches is not so cut-and-dry, it takes some experience (and several mistakes) to be able to pick a 1"x2" swatch that will look like what you want, when the wall is 10' x 20'.....or larger.

Scale modeling. We have to adapt colors to the scale. But, this veers OT.........
 
Scale models are often found in TV commercials, and in in film.
Yes, the paint and color of such things is rather off-topic.
But when presented to the public, (in TV and film) the variance of such colors, can be discussed.
 
Just heard today (on an NPR radio channel) how "beautiful and blue" (their words) the sky was above southern Oregon.

I know that there are no such things as "chem"trails....and I expect that most NPR listeners are equally informed and educated.
 
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