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Old 03-29-2004, 05:25 PM   #1
Allan Rahbek Allan Rahbek is offline
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Joined: Mar 2004
Location: 8543-dk Hornslet, Denmark
Posts: 1,642
Colors in artificial lighting

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.

The setup is: A photo in color to be painted in a warm (orange) light.
All the colors will be more or less orange, but you paint it as you see it. The following day you take it out into the cold (blue) daylight. Would the colors, on the canvas, not have the same relative values as on the photo? I think so.

I normally paint my portraits in the daytime, from live or photo, so I have never really paid attention to the problem before.

But after thinking about it most of the day, I have come to this conclusion:
If painting a LIVE portrait then there vil be a problem about how the colored light "colors" the skin. You will see the exposed side as orange and the shadows as brown.

The following day, in the daylight, you will still see the colors as orange and brown although they are colder.

Besides the fact that it is tiring to work in bad light, you don

Last edited by Allan Rahbek; 03-30-2004 at 03:49 PM.
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