The Munsell Student Color Set

[Richard Bingham]

What is a forum, if not a teaching opportunity?

Any problems lie in arriving at methodology by consensus . . . so as not to hurt anyone's feelings.

Only the outline of Marvin's teaching approach can be fully apprehended here, you'd have to take his class to get the full benefit. Meantime, even those of us who insist on re-inventing the wheel can benefit from the ordered approach that identifying one's major value separations and working from a set-palette bring to the process.

Too many beginning painters are seduced by the blather of critical word-stuffing that lauds 'intuitive" approaches, saying stupid things like "He mixed his colors right on the canvas'. If you think that's the way to approach a painting, it's going to be a long, tough haul!

[Marvin Mattelson]

Just for the sake of clarification here, the Munsell System of color notation is only an organized and mathematical way of specifying the three traits of a color: hue, value and chroma. Using Munsell to identify the color you've mixed allows you to logically determine what you need to add in order to hit your target.

Munsell is not about mixing and adding grays to make colors more neutral. You can achieve neutrality in a variety of ways, as Julie noted. Adding grays is a technique for neutralizing color that some, like Julie and myself, feel is easier and more efficient then other techniques. Munsell is not a technique or methodology, it's just a way to categorize color.

[Enzie Shahmiri]

I like to throw in a little friendly "challenge". Marvin has a three Student Gallery pages on his web site. For anyone doubting the effectiveness of this approach, I would google the students and look at work done prior to the workshops and after the workshops.

The results speak for themselves and that for me is all the validation necessary to prove that this technique can make a change in the way students learn to deal with color. As Marvin said, this method has been around for years. He just happens to be one of the very few instructors who I have found, who teach this method.

Just as Allan pointed out there are many ways to reach similar results, but why struggle for years, when there is an easier way to learn?!

[Linda Ciallelo]

I spent a lot of years mixing compliments with triads, but recently started using black instead. Often times the color that I'm aiming for isn't the color I end up using. Once I put it on the canvas I change my mind. It's not always about matching a hue, chroma, and value exactly to the reference, but about what looks best in the painting. I have found that there can be a multitude of options as to how someone can interpret the colors of the reference as well as the options of how to mix them. I think Whistler is closest to my inherent color sense. His chroma is very subtle but he still uses some soft blues. It's not a matter of using blue "or" black, but "both". I usually don't have trouble "hitting" the color I'm after, but often change my mind after I put it on the canvas. I don't see how the Munsell system could help me with that. Maybe if I grayed the chroma down enough, it would look good with anything because it would be very neutral.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Linda,

The Munsell system is not necessarily just about neutralizing a color. That is merely one option. A color on your palette isn't the same as it appears when placed on your painting because the context changes.

The Munsell system, at least the way I use it, acts as a compass. If I place a color down and it doesn't look right, either the hue, value or chroma (or, in a worse case scenario, a combination of the three) will pop out to me. If the value looks too light, I'll darken it, or too dark and I'll lighten it. If it looks too gray, I'll increase the chroma, or if it's too intense I'll neutralize it. If the hue looks off, I'll go opposite direction. In other words, if a blue looks too blue-green I'll shift it towards a blue-purple.

I'm always thinking in terms of three dimensional color space, HVC.

[Linda Ciallelo]

Marvin,
I see what you're saying. It organizes ones thoughts in such a way that the problem can be "worked on" constructively, in a way that is better than trial and error. Since most of what we do is ask ourselves "what's wrong with this painting"? the Munsell system gives some concrete answers by breaking the color down into different parts so that the problem is more easily identified. It's more like Math. :-)

[Steven Sweeney]

Membership and participation has changed a lot over the years and not everyone is aware of a lot of interesting threads of yore.

The hue/value/chroma analytical process has often come up, perhaps more focused in this thread --

http://forum.portraitartist.com/showthread.php?t=2277

-- than anywhere else. Worth a review in connection with this discussion.

[Steven Sweeney]

I must have been very lucky, many years before I undertook any formal training, to have acquired a modest little second-hand book

[Linda Ciallelo]

Like Garth Herrick once said " the most important thing is to have a good reference".