Gamut Masking

Artist James Gurney demonstrates a color mixing method called "gamut masking" or where a map or mask of a color scheme superimposed over a color wheel guides the choices of a painting.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Painting
• Color
• James Gurney

[1908salsa]

Thank you Mr.Gurney for the great video! I must ask one question though, If you're only allowed to use the colors from the gamut selection cutout plus white how do you achieve the darkest tones that show up in both of your demo paintings and the diner painting in this video? In the section of the video where you're mixing colors on the paper palette it looks as if you're mixing the colors selected from the gamut cutout with a darker color; what's your criteria when choosing these darker colors?

[gurneyjourney]

@1908salsa Good question. The colors inside the gamut show how those appear in a mid-range value. Your strings will take the mixtures for each of those subjective primaries all the way from very light to very dark. (I almost never go all the way to black, because I want to keep some character in the colors.) Another way to think of it is that the color wheel is a 2D slice through a 3D color space of hue, chroma, and value. So really the gamut you're creating is 3D rather than 2D.

[gurneyjourney]

Krysjez: It's a good question. I have to "find" the subject two times. Once in the drawing and once in the painting. To paint in oil means covering up a few lines. But you can find them again easily enough.

[gurneyjourney]

Thanks, everybody. Edward, yes, it's on paper mounted to illustration board and covered with acrylic matte medium.

[gurneyjourney]

Desembrey--someday when things calm down!

[1908salsa]

@gurneyjourney ...whoa!..I didn't conceptualized it that way at all! ..but now it makes sense that in the center of the gamut wheel there's grey!... I'm assuming that theoretically if we slice away from the mid-range values of this 3D color space, in the center of any one of each new slice we might find white or black according to how far away from the mid-range values of the wheel we slice? Thank you for taking the time for answering my question Mr.Gurney!

[lipslide8]

thanks u for the tutorial and the inspiration man... keep doing what you are doing

[icehz]

Very interesting, going to try out this method! Thanks for the video!

[kilija383]

@gurneyjourney question. the painting that you show at 1:23 looks like it has green in it. The car looks green an the foilage looks green. Yet you can't mix green from the colors you claimed to have use to make it, Whats the deal. By the way, I like your book light and color

[krysjez]

this is a 'newbie' question from one who's only tried oils once...but I noticed you painting over details like the TV antennae (?) on top of the buildings when you put in the blue for the sky. If such details are going to be covered up, why bother putting them in the underdrawing?

[C0mBineD]

what medium are you using here?