Welcome to

by Linda Carson

big black pig studio
98 King St. N., Waterloo Ontario Canada
www.bigblackpig.com

Optical Blending

Mixing paint colours on the palette is not the only way to create blended colours in the viewer's eye. If you put pure unmixed colours side by side on the painting, the viewer's eye will tend to blend the colours together. Pure unmixed colours can also be applied in layers so that the colours appear to blend.

If you look very closely at your television screen or a colour photograph in the newspaper, you'll find that the rainbow of colours you see is actually made up of tiny bits of just a few colours. When you back up again and look from a healthy distance, the bits appear to blend together to form varied colours and tones again. This is optical blending: blending that takes place in the viewer's eye rather than on the page, the canvas or the screen.

Several painting techniques rely on optical blending for their results: scumbling, broken colour, glazing, and, most famously, Pointillism.

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