Colors in artificial lighting

[Allan Rahbek]

Originally Posted by Adriano Maggi

"Inspired by the very technical information on artificial lighting, I would like to contribute with a, hopefully, very simple question on how artificial lighting affects our perception of color."
Hi Allan
When I use pastels, I'm very carefull to avoid yellows,because artificial light have a yellow component. Otherwise the next day in a daylight the painting would be full of yellow tones,unbearable to see.
Ciao
Adriano

Hi Adriano,
When we paint in yellow artificial light all the colors will be affected by the light.

The reason that we can see colors at all is that things, and skin, reflects the light that shines on them. In full spectrum daylight you will see a green apple as a green apple, right?

What happens if you paint the green apple in a yellow studio light ?
Two things will happen. Because that the color balance of the light source is weighted toward yellow and therefore contains less red and blue, the green apple will appear more yellowish green and relatively lighter in value than if it was seen in full spectrum daylight.

But it is not only the color that changes when the light is out of balance, it is also the amount of light that is unbalanced. So if you see something that is multicolored, you will see the yellows as lighter than they are and the red / blue as darker than they are.

Allan

[Adriano Maggi]

Hi allan
what you 've said is perfecly right
The only mistake I would be worried about,when looking the day after in a daylight, is that the painting would'nt show a strong yellow colour. For this reason I use a daylight lamp (a blue one) or I avoid previously cadmium deep yellow from my box.
Ciao
Adriano

[Lesley Grindlay]

I too am having a great deal of troubles painting in artificial lighting. I've tried various palette colours to accommodate lighting, the example was painted from life in front of a mirror. I have an overhead light to light my palette and another lamp to light my face. But it just seems so dark and photographing it is just as challenging. What am I doing wrong?

I do opologise Allan for posting my pic, I didnt mean to intrude on your post.