What Is Modulation?
I mostly mean color modulation, but also value modulation. It’s a word that’s in my head all the time as I’m painting.
Basically, it’s moving from one hue into another. Like, you might move from a red into a purple. That would be a modulation in hue. And it can be quite subtle. You could go from a bluish purple into a slightly reddish purple. It doesn’t have to be anything massive. It’s still modulating. And it’s really important.
The definition: also known as gradation. It is always desirable in painting to modulate colors from cool to warm, from dark to light or from one hue to the next. Instead of just laying down a flat, unmodulated color, you want to do some modulating. Always be modulating. ABM.
Now, a flat approach can constitute a style. It might be your style. Might be awesome. Fine, good. One approach is like the mosaic sort of approach—a lot of discrete, flat patches of color that actually create interest. That’s a totally valid approach. That’s not how I work. We’re talking about a painter that modulates. And I hope it’s you after you watch this video.
Why Modulation Matters—Everywhere and Always
Modulation matters everywhere and always. One of the reasons the word modulation is in my head all the time while painting is because there are very few aspects of an oil painting that will not benefit from some modulation, even in big ways or little ways.
Modulation creates visual interest, suggests atmosphere and space, and helps guide the viewer’s eye through the painting.
Back in the early days of the computer era, when I was working in Photoshop, one of our gigs was making little illustrations of bugs—ladybugs, dragonflies, things like that. Because you had such limited colors, you always had to be doing gradations to create interest. And I think that’s one of the things that really helped me as a painter because in screen printing, which is mostly what I was working for, you always have a limited palette.
Sometimes a maximum of eight colors for most designs. And if you could do it with four colors, the company generally would make more money too, because that’s less cost for printing. So maximizing what you’re doing always—at least with the value shift from darker to lighter. It can be very subtle, this modulation thing. And if it’s subtle, that’s fine. You want to do it. You want to always look for any opportunity you can to move things.
The Sky Strategy
When I’m doing the sky behind the clouds, I always modulate that background sky color. And you’ll see me do it in painting after painting. Generally I’ll do the blue sky first behind the cloud shapes. And it’s always going to be darker and usually richer, more chromatic at the top of the sky.
Darker, richer, more chromatic. And then as we come down towards the horizon, it becomes less colorful, more chalky, because that’s the idea of the haze coming up from the ground plane, right?
So we modulate from the deeper blue to a light, creamy ochre towards the horizon. Dancing over this basic modulation are the clouds themselves, which will also have their own kind of modulation. And clouds—the reason we see a cloud is different from the sky is because it’s usually gray and the sky is some kind of blue, right?
You can really bring a lot of drama and interest in even the most boring sky you might be painting from. Don’t make your painting boring. We don’t want that. We don’t need it. We want your painting to be interesting.
One of the ways you can do that is use the reference as reference. But as you create the painting, remember modulation. The clouds have a whole range from value, from darks to lights, from cools to warm. And then you can change up the hue. Suddenly it looks really interesting and attractive.
Tree Edges and Transitions
An especially crucial place to think of this aspect of landscape painting would be where the trees meet the sky. This is a great place to modulate the tree edges by adding a bit of sky color, bringing it in with the tree color.
You’ve got to be careful. Sometimes this could create a chalky, muddy mess. But don’t do that. Work intelligently. If you need to, just make sure there’s less white in that mixture you’re bringing into the edges of the trees to modulate those edges.
This gives you an area of transition. The master of this is Camille Corot. Just be thinking transition. And then be careful, because if you do it tight, you get the halo effect. And that’s the kiss of death. You don’t want that.
But any strategy for addressing the tree edges coming in over the sky—that’s especially, I think, when you’re starting out, one of the most challenging things to master with painting: how your tree edges interact with the sky. Modulation is one of the big keys.
Let’s visualize the tree shape. You have a range of greens. And I’m going to tell you to bring in a bunch of reds and things to create interest and variety. But generally, if you imagine this tree shape and the light hitting it on one side, that is a modulation, isn’t it, running across there.
You’re going to want to have, on one side of the tree, it might be cool and blue. And as we move towards the light, it might go warmer and more orangey. But still in that range of greens, because green can support all those transitions.
The Photograph Problem
This is a place where photographs betray most painters. Most photographs will present quite a harsh edge. They tend to make things look clipped and cut out. They tend to over accentuate that contrast between the darker tree shapes and the lighter sky.
And you, as the painter, it’s incumbent on you to soften that and make it feel more natural, because you don’t see things as a human the way photographs capture them. We have the ability to perceive a lot more light in the shadow areas and a lot more darkness in the light areas than most cameras do.
You’re a human being making a painting for other human beings. So definitely don’t do these clipped out looking trees.
The Ground Plane
Because our last talk was about painting nothing—painting areas of ground that’s boring, or grass that’s boring, or a beach that’s boring. And one of the big things you can do to create interest in any boring flat area is modulate.
Think about the modulation of the ground plane. Areas of dirt, grass, and rock need to be modulated just the same as the sky. In the case of the ground, warmer, darker colors at the bottom moving in. I always want to pull you in. So the modulation is designed to point the viewer to the subject. Usually it’ll be a group of trees or something.
Almost everything in your painting should be subtly pointing the viewer to that. And the modulation of all the colors in the ground plane should be moving you towards that area. A lot of times it’s a dark to light thing. But the same thing applies with the ground as any other thing you’re modulating.
You have three ways to modulate: value, hue (the actual color itself), and warmth or coolness of that color. You could go nuts with it. You could go absolutely nuts.
If you were a graphic artist, this is something you would have definitely employed because you’re working with more simple forms. As a painter, we can do all kinds of fancy stuff with our brush strokes. But even while you’re doing all that, modulate the whole way through.
On the ground, I’ve got a path problem. I’m a path junkie. I’m going to put a path in almost every scene and what I do—or a road or a stream, same difference from a visual standpoint. And you always see me make the modulation throughout the path from somewhat darker and more subdued colors to brighter. And quite often more saturated colors.
You don’t have to modulate all three of those aspects. You can do. And in many cases, you should do. But you do what’s appropriate for the scene. Like in the case of a path, you’re not going to want to make it dark gray on the bottom and modulate it up to a screaming bright orange unless you’re doing some kind of crazy fauvist painting.
The Intuitive Aspect
Color modulation is one of those areas where intuition comes into play. I’m painting alone and the color I’m painting may or may not even be in the reference. Or it might be something triggering me. But often I’ll say, ah, I should bring in some violet here. I should bring in some red here. Or bring in whatever it is.
That’ll pop into your mind. And you want to sensitize yourself to that inner prompting. Because the more you pay attention, the more you listen to that interior voice, the stronger it becomes. And it will help you make more dynamic and interesting paintings.
ABM. Always be modulating. I’m always trying to create interest. And I love the word modulation. Color modulation is a big part of what I do. It’s all about responding to what’s happening on the canvas and making the necessary shifts to enhance the overall visual interest of the painting.
Remember those letters: ABM. Write it down on your easel off to the side. Because there’s almost nothing in your painting you can’t modulate.
Even if this makes you a little self-conscious as you’re painting, fine. Good. Get it in there. Because this information, you want this in your painterly DNA. This will make you a better painter right off the bat.
Learning how to execute the shape of a tree and stuff, that really comes with experience. But you could be modulating right now. Right now you could improve your paintings with modulation. So ABM.
Modulation Versus Blending
It’s important to note that modulation is not the same thing as blending. Blending creates smooth transitions. You can smear, or you can dab, or you can do whatever. Smooth transitions between colors, which can be beautiful, but sometimes lack character.
Modulation on the other hand is often more about purposeful shifts in color temperature, hue, and value. That can be blended or not. You can do a lot less blending if you’ve got modulation, actually, because you have more interest. All this depends on your desired effect, of course.
Why It Matters in Tonalism
In tonalist painting, modulation is particularly important because it helps to create the atmospheric quality that defines the style. When you start simplifying forms, you have to bring in interest. And the best way to do that is with modulation of value, hue, and the coolness or warmness of the colors.
By shifting colors and values, you can suggest mist, atmospheric perspective. Think of it like you’ve got that ridge of hills in the middle distance. Instead of doing it flat, you can bring up some lightness from the bottom. That’s a cool trick. And that could indicate fog, or it just could indicate dust, or haze, or whatever. But that in itself would be modulating in that area from a value modulation. It could also be a color modulation.
A Simple Exercise
To develop your sense of modulation, try this simple exercise. Design a simple landscape with just a sky, distant hills, and a foreground. Make it simple—think of those ’80s graphics with simple mountains and some simple cloud shapes. Just make everything really simple and almost graphic and designy for this exercise.
For each element, consciously modulate your colors. In the sky, shift from colder blues at the top to warmer, lighter blues near the horizon. For the hills, modulate from cooler, bluer tones in the distance to warmer greens as they come forward. And in the foreground, practice shifting between warmer and cooler greens and browns in the ground plane.
You don’t really need a reference for this either. And I think you’ll see that this will look really attractive and pretty cool and definitely help you get why this is so critical.
The Payoff
Over time, modulation will become second nature, and you’ll find yourself instinctively creating more dynamic, atmospheric paintings that capture not just what you see but what you feel. And that’s what we want.
That’s what you bring to the party, right? Because you’re the only person. The universe split itself into billions of little bits. And each one of us is occupied by one of those bits. And each one of us has a unique perspective that only we have and only we will ever have.
Because you have a unique perspective on things, this is what you have to offer. This is what you bring to the party. And if you spend a little time developing it, you’ll create work that no one else could ever create. And that’s intrinsically valuable and meaningful.
The Real Difference
It’s the difference between a painting that looks flat and one that breathes. It’s the difference between documentation and emotion. You feel things. Feeling, that’s what you have.
Modulation is not just a technique. It’s a way of seeing and responding and painting as you are working that acknowledges the constant shifts and changes in light, color, and atmosphere that make up our world and that make things so rich.
And it’s everywhere. Once you start dialing into it, you’ll see it everywhere. Many times I say, oh, you put a Z in there and then start using that to help you break up the space. Well, a lot of times after you do that, you say, well, there actually was a lot more deviation in that space. And you know what, my little way of breaking it up very much resembles what was there that you weren’t seeing.
And it’s very much the same thing with modulating. Once you’re dialed in, you’ll see it’s everywhere. And it’s real key to basically, it’s a rendering thing. It’s a painting thing. But it’s important to create interest and make your art more vital.
Take good care. Stay out of trouble.
And fight the power.
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