Most Popular Paintings

[John Zeissig]

Hi Celeste,

Celeste McCall: You said, " Also, if you are looking at the night sky and see something that you want to see better, then don't look directly at it and it will appear brighter. This is a common phenomenon. But unfortunately I can't explain it."

The reason that we are most sensitive to stimuli slightly off the center of gaze under very low levels of illumination is the result of the duplex nature of the retina. There are two basic kinds of receptor cells in the retina: rods and cones. Under very low overall levels of illumination only the rods are operating, and they are distributed differently than the cones. There are no rods in the fovea centralis, the most densely populated area of the retina where we usually center objects of interest under daytime conditions. The rods have their greatest concentration about 8 degrees of visual angle outside the fovea. Hence under low levels of illumination (technically called scotopic conditions) maximum sensitivity is achieved slightly off the normal center of gaze.

Here's my version of Tim as Cavalier. Not a dead ringer, as you can see, but definitely a resemblance.

[Celeste McCall]

First of all, John, Thank you for explaining that. Now, it makes sense why Monet's waterlily painting in the Getty kept summoning me back and back and back. That was very powerful.

Also, (laughing out loud), great job on the portrait!

Hope Tim doesn't mind being immortalized.

[Kimberly Dow]

Celeste,

No, I do not have any other thoughts on the subjects you are discussing, sorry. I have not retained much of what I learned in college art history classes...I am reading with interest though.

John,
Even though you are clearly over-educated you are saved in my book by your sense of humor.

I am just wondering if that portrait had been painted full-figure - would we get to see the tights?

[Timothy C. Tyler]

John that's really very good. I've not laughed so hard in a while.

[Celeste McCall]

Color choices of some of the most popular paintings, that I am comparing, are keeping their colors simple. They seem to have painted mainly with analogous, or complimentary, or triadic color schemes. The more simple the color scheme, the more popular it seemed to be.

And finally, the last thing that I am noticing is a LOT of emphasis on lines and contrasting (mostly diagonal) lines that are used in certain proportions.


This would be a really interesting thing to do on a portrait with the values, colors, and diagonals and proportions, and the overlapping of those lines that create depth.

I actually put this to a test by using just the simplest color schemes on pieces that I took the the World Show in July at Atlanta, Ga. I sold every one of them.

Does a complimentary color scheme make it more simple and therefore desirable? What about analogous?

Ok, that is what I am seeing besides the usual "correct" placement, and other important but generally known "tricks".

Like I said in the beginning. Perhaps you all already new this, but it is only with the in- depth comparisons that I have done this past summer that it started to become clear that this is, at the very least, a very common thread of many of the most popular and best selling prints.

I wonder if this is why I admire the paintings of Julian Robles of Taos so much.

[Timothy C. Tyler]

The red /green thing has worked well for a long time with skin tones. (It has the least value contrast)

[Celeste McCall]

Good tip Tim. Thanks.

Greens are always popular it seems. In my art, if you put lots of pink colors in the painting then it sells also. The colors on the roses and grapes on the study that I recently put up (I did it about 6 years ago so it's old and ick, but the colors always remain popular) I put it up yesterday on the website and I sold two of them this morning. http://celestemccall.net/studies1.html) That is always a crowd pleasing color in my neck of the woods.

The old "popular" paintings are using a lot of blues and orange as well.

When painting a bowl of fruit, some artists paint using three analogous colors such as on a pear: orange, yellow, yellow green. That is good. But the problem that some are doing is that they use this idea all over the painting: leaves= yellow green/green/blue green. And then they add a wash of the color of the fruit that is next to it onto the reflected light or highlight, and then they do the same on the grapes and the orange and apple etc. and soon they have a rainbow going. Nothing wrong with that, to be sure, but each color takes up space on the canvas and breaks up the whole. So the old master's secret of keeping it simple was much more wise. Clearer message me thinks.

[Celeste McCall]

Oh my goodness! I just viewed Richard Whitney's web page of his paintings. He is doing the same thing that I am talking about.

Please go to his website and look at the picture of the woman with the black dress standing in front of the red wall. He used red in the black dress. Some might have used a black dress with green in it, but this guy knows THE trick. The eye flows so much easier. It's "easy to look at".

And, after my studies on greys this summer and observing that analogous grays make the subject color glow, well, this just confirms more of that same thought.

But using analogous grays is another subject and one which can best be found on the internet with all it's colored boxes, etc.

Ok, thank you all for your input on this topic.