Seeing the Blues

 A person can be feeling the blues especially this time of year, but how about seeing the blues? In a recent post I made a colour analysis of a spectacular shadow crossing over a tall pile of snow. The result showed that my painted shadow was too light and turquoise as compared to the photographic shadow. It's not like I want to be a 'human camera' otherwise known as a 'photo realist' but I was curious to know what type of paint mix would work best. The painting above used a variety of blues I have, and mixed with varying amounts of bone black (PBk9) which is an orangeish black, and water to thin out the paint. I also wanted the paint test to have some style! 

Seeing The Blues 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, (No. 2540b)

To make a long story short, indothrene blue (PB60) was the only true blue option, all the others leaned to turquoise, which explains my earlier painting which used phthalo sapphire. Here is the colour pick from indothrene blue:

The hue angle (H) at 216 is literally identical to the hue angle I measured off the photo. However, the mix was a little to dark and slightly more saturated. Here was the colour analysis from the photo for comparison:

Notice the exact same hue (H=216) but the saturation is lower (S=63) and the value is higher (V=63) as compared to my indothrene blue test. This means that adding black paint was wrong. In fact, the solution is rather simple, just add a bit more water to indothrene blue paint, and a touch of gray. Here was a follow up test, I also included burnt sienna orange on the right to see what happened when mixed:

 

The third circle was extremely close to the shadow blue I detected in the photo. Adding burnt sienna, the neutralizing complement that all books recommend, actually throws the hue off, it goes back to leaning turquoise (greenish). Therefor, to paint a snow shadow on a sunny, blue-sky day, the formula is indothrene blue, diluted with water and touch of grey ideally diluted carbon black. (No. 2616b)