How to key up or intensify Chroma

[Richard Bingham]

Kreutz instructs at the Art Student's League? He has instructional DVDs out, what little I can see of his work is great. (anyone have some links?)

Here's some thoughts that may help, generally.
1. A lot of painters use titanium white, not realizing that it is very opaque, and tends to make "chalky" color mixes. Raising the value of any color decreases intensity, but moreso with tit white than with zinc or flake.
2. Color intensity is a function of value. The "bump" (i.e. that transitional area between light and shade, or "penumbra") is where the local color of any item is most intense.
3. Oddly, intense red easily recedes. This is one reason why the "thin red line" often used by illustrators (and others) to "turn" flesh is a useful "trick".
4. Forcing local complimentary contrasts will work to intensify chroma, e.g., a "red" apple will seem far more intense against a "green" background.
5. Consider Munsell's "5 primary" basic color wheel rather than the traditional red, blue, yellow system. The relationships thus gained often solve your apprehension of local color and its relative intensity more easily.
6. Greys make the picture! (our world is not as colorful as we imagine it . . . that's why we gravitate to items that do have intense coloration, like the iris of the eye, flowers, etc.)

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Richard, thanks! I will have to think about these....

[Enzie Shahmiri]

This worked like a charm...

Keeping all these point in mind, I greyed down adjacent areas first. In this case the adjacent colors are a value1-2 (Munsell) really dark fuchsia/red. Then I added for punch pure high chroma paint "Cad Red "(sorry Marvin ). After that I let the area dry completely and did a wash of the base color over it. This was done to make sure the area harmonizes with the rest and to keep it within a proximate value. If you squint, the punched up area should dissapear more or less into the adjacent areas. It does it nicely on the painting. No white was used and the result is a nice glow.

This glow effect only works well if used very sparingly in very selected areas and I would recommend being very, very selective about where do add this type of punch.