Warm and cool defined

[Michael Fournier]

I won't get into this color thread except to note that as Michael says, much of what is being discussed is semantics. One man's cool is another man's warm. On your question about the warm skin tone, Michael, I would say that what you have described is a very cool flesh tone.

Yes, you could say that, since it is an example of a flesh tone as seen under cool north light. Also it is just such an example that shows that warm and cool are relative to the other colors in the painting. I tend to lean toward cool highlights and warm shadows and the midtones are a mix, depending on the amount of blood in the area, or if it is a receding plane or not.

I will go back to a quote from Nelson Shanks when asked how to mix a flesh tone he replied with: "Do you have 2 years? I will tell you." You just can't cover this topic in a single Forum post. So much of this is subjective, and there are so many variations, that there is no short answer. Sure, you can make simple rules or guidelines, but they will be wrong as many times as they will be correct.

A few Examples:

• Shadows are warm under cool light.
  
  Sure that can be true but it can also be completely wrong many things can affect the shadows, like a blue from another object that is affecting the ambient and reflected light in the room.
  
  Sunlight outdoors is warm and the shadows are cool.
  
  Well, the impressionists sure thought that this one was true but is it always? No not all the time.
  
  Cool colors recede, warm colors come forward.
  
  Again this rule works if your background is cool or gets cooler as it recedes as in a atmospheric landscape. But what if your background was a huge fire and things closer to that fire where very effected by that warm light, but the objects in the foreground were lit buy a cool light source? Well, in this case warm colors would recede, In other words, objects with a greater amount of the background color tend to recede into that background. It does not matter if it is warm or cool.

So can you really paint following rules blindly? No.

Try to paint what you see. The rest it just technique.