Warm and Cold Colors

In this article painter Eilyahu Mirlis will mention the essentials of the theme of warm and cold colors.

When we begin to talk about color in painting, this is one of the first themes that usually is mentioned.

Mirlis indicates that it is something definitely important because it is linked to many different themes that will contribute to the composition of your works. When applied properly, will give your works a special depth and a sensory connection with the observer that goes far beyond its two dimensions.

“You have surely seen one or several paintings that transmitted something like this to you. That they transport you towards what they represent or that it seems that they bring it before you with a kind of augmented reality ... Well, the temperature of the colors contributes greatly to achieve these effects” says the talented painter Mirlis.

As indicated by Mirlis, when they are used correctly, warm and cold colors are one of those elements that can amplify the general atmosphere of what you want to achieve with your work.

Thus, on this occasion Mirlis hopes to contribute so that you can have a better understanding of the temperature of colors and put this knowledge into practice, try it out by yourself and thus see the benefit of its application reflected in your works.

In theory

The great artists have not achieved such a fresh, lively and inspiring handling of color as that of the Impressionists (or approaching more towards the confines of abstraction, that of the Fauvists) by mere luck.

Mirlis shares that the theories of color evolved from the primitive palette (with its red, black, yellow and white as the basis of all pictorial composition) and all the meaning attributed to these colors, to the modern chromatic circle.

In fact, it is more correct to say the modern chromatic circles, because in reality, due to specialties, practicality and diversification, different approaches to color can be recognized.

And this is not only a matter of observation: it was a matter of materials.

“So on the one hand we have Newton and his discoveries about light and color, but we also have the aspect of chemistry applied to the arts, where we did not work with beams of light, but with different plants, minerals and other materials to obtaining the pigments used in graphic representations of all kinds,”says Eilyahu Mirlis.

Warm and cold colors

Mirlis, who has created a number of artworks using the theory of warm and cold colors, indicates that Munsell's system is a good example of the detailedness of color theory.

In this system, the mixture of the so-called primary colors does not result in white, but depending on the pigments, very dark browns or grays and ideally black could be obtained. However, it is true that the approximations of physics and chemistry intersect at different points.

Eilyahu Mirlis indicates that being enthusiastic observers of these variations, various artists, thinkers and scientists began to refine and increase their conception of color quite organically. It was evident that not all shades of different colors served the same purpose when painting and representing different objects in a space.

This, together with the symbolism given to colors and the emotional perception associated with it, allowed us to make certain distinctions, such as temperature.