Vacuum focus

One way to create a strong center of interest is to use vacuum focus. With vacuum focus you subordinate all other areas through desaturation and hue, leaving the most intense and alien color in the focal area. Marketers use this technique a lot, especially in movie posters.

Here are two recent blockbusters. In the Batman movie poster, you can see how overall the image is cool and desaturated. The burning bat symbol is in an intense complementary color to the overall blue hue, bringing your eye immediately to it. In the Sherlock Holmes movies poster it's a little more subtle, but the same technique is used. The overall image is a fairly desaturated blue-green, but the faces of the heroes — while also desaturated — are much warmer than the surrounding elements. Notice that even though some of those elements are also people, they are still of the desaturated green color.

They also portray very different ideas...in the Batman poster, the idea of the Batman symbol burning puts to question not only Batman's world going awry, but Batman himself. While the Sherlock Holmes is clearly about the celebrity actors and their characters and relationship. But that's getting a little sidetracked.

You can even use vacuum focusing on in traditional painting. Here are a couple landscapes using that technique.


The first image is by Dennis Sheehan. You can see how the overall feel of the piece is a cool green, but where the sunlight is striking through it is a much more intense and warmer color, kept to a fairly defined area. The second is a Jove Wang painting. Jove is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists. Here you can easily see the overall cool and desaturated colors and how the intense red and orange on the boat leap out at you, creating a strong center of interest.

When planning a painting, vacuum focus can be a great technique to bring about a strong center of interest and a stronger piece of work.

Limited Palette

Most people know I use a limited palette in my work. While it gives me wonderful color harmony in a piece, and I can get relatively any mixed color I want, it does have some limitations. One of those limitations is that one can begin to rely on mixing the same colors painting to painting and not rely on what the painting needs or what nature is showing. For instance, it's easy to create a warm green by mixing yellow, ultramarine and red (or umber). So the next painting you want a warm green, you can find yourself habitually mixing the same green with the same percentages of mixture and not even realizing it, even though the variance of hue to saturation needed or seen may be different. While it's good to have a "voice" within our work, that voice should not come by way of reliance on habitual color mixing. So to break my own mold, I will sometimes switch a color out. Instead of Cad Red Medium, I'll use Alizarin Permanent. Instead of Ultramarine Blue, I'll add or substitute Prussian Blue.

Recently however, I did something I haven't done in a long time. I substituted all of the colors on my palette. Starting with what I learned as Rembrandt's palette (Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Black and White) Above are some quick studies I did using only Yellow Ochre, Red Umber, Ivory Black and White. I had to vary from Rembrandt's because I didn't have any Burnt Sienna in my drawer. Also, in the night scene I did add Prussian Blue to get the green of the sky the way I wanted it, since the black wasn't taking me there, but it was a small amount added to the mix, just to bump up the intensity.

On a side note: as I was painting the autumn study, my youngest daughter Zoe came into the studio to see what I was doing. She commented how nice the green grass was. When I showed her my palette, she asked where the green was? So I gave her a quick lesson on color theory and mixing. I thoroughly enjoyed the connection with my daughter I received through art.

Warm vs. Cool

After having just given a talk on understanding color and how to use it, I've decided to post a few of the concepts here on the blog. Especially since I haven't been as diligent about posting as I would like. I'll talk generally at first, and in later posts I'll cover some more specific ideas about color. I'm assuming that you know the basics of a color wheel, and will move on beyond that so as not to get lost in the quagmire of abstract color theory, but use it for more practical purposes.

One of the most important concepts of color is understanding and using color temperature schemes. When picking an overall color for your painting think about what mood you want to evoke, as this will make the choosing of colors easier.


Cool colors are commonly viewed as calmer and more relaxing as well as being cold. Warm colors are usually associated with energy and movement and heat. Above is an extreme example of that idea in nature. One can feel the coldness of the iceberg above, but also the quiet, peaceful solitude, barely a bird around. With the lava, the tension builds quickly. The heat is strong and the energy is fast moving. We can hear the crackle and pop of the fire. These qualities can be used in paintings as well.



Above is a painting by John Singer Sargent in grayscale. By taking the color away from the image, little emotion is felt, it is simply a woman seated at a dinner table. While it's a nice painting, and the composition is strong and the drawing is accurate, we are uncertain what to feel about this woman, or what she is feeling. But add a cool color scheme and we immediately get a sense of emotion and mood.


With a cool palette, the feeling of calm and quiet is evoked. The woman is sitting comfortable in the atmosphere. Maybe she's just had a wonderful dinner with her husband and dear friends and is relaxing before she gets ready to turn in for the night. Sounds like a nice story for the painting. But, make it a warm color scheme and it is a very different mood.


Now there seems to be a disquiet to the scene; an underlying tension. And we can make up a story behind this feeling, too. (Note: the warm scheme is the one Sargent used.)

Here's an illustration by Saul Tepper called The Make-up Time. I've transformed it into grayscale, cool colors (his palette), and warm colors. You can click on it to see it larger. In the cool colored version, you can sense that the fight is over, and now is the time for the couple to work it out. And you believe they will. However, with the warm colored version, it says anger and passion. The clenched fists of the boy have a very different meaning and you are uncertain just how bad this may turn out. You can see how quickly it goes from "The Make-up Time" to "The Break-up TIme" — a very different feeling by simply changing the overall hue of the piece.


Color evokes mood better than any other tool in our toolbox. And we as artists must make it our duty to understand how to use it so we can better communicate these emotions to others.