What Vermeer Knew About Color That Most Painters Miss

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]This brown beam in this Vermeier painting contains one of the most expensive blues ever made. And the funny thing is that you can't even tell that there's blue in it by just looking at it. Ultramarine blue was worth more than gold in Vermeier's time. And for that reason, most painters would use it very, very carefully and only in areas that were clearly blue. For example, like in this painting, you can very quickly easily see where all the ultramine blue went and was used. But Vermeier thought and worked very differently from those around him. He would take this incredibly expensive pigment and mix it into something like brown for those wooden beams. But it didn't just stop there. He would mix into all sorts of places that were more obscure like shadows and walls and all sorts of things. It was his paintings were dripping in this ultramarine blue color.

[00:00:52]And this is so radically different from his contemporaries. And when you see how differently from your thought of and treated color, it changes how you think about color. And it helps you to kind of get out of just conventional ways of thinking of and applying color to your painting. And in order to get there, one of the most important things to understand is this. You don't always see the color that's actually doing the work. In fact, very often the most important colors in a mixture are not visible at all. And we see this time and time again in Vermeier's paintings. Now, to give a real live example of this in action, I have this developing painting of a lemon that has kind of this pinkish background and foreground area. An incredibly important color that I used to mix up this pinkish color was actually green. And you wouldn't think green when you look at this color, but yet it was incredibly important. And the reason for that is because green is more or less the complimentary color of pink.

[00:01:57]And so that green really helped to mute my pink color um and tone it down just a little bit. And this might seem like a small thing, but it's incredibly crucial, especially for the painting as a whole. Color in painting isn't just about what's happening on the surface.

[00:02:14]It's about what's going on underneath and how colors are influencing each other now. Painters have been using color in this way for centuries, mixing unexpected colors into more neutral areas, into shadow areas. And Vermeier did this almost better than anyone else.

[00:02:31]And that way of thinking and working creates a subtle vibration between colors that makes a painting feel more alive, more convincing. And that's because color doesn't just exist isolated on its own. If you have a still life with a lemon um and then some other objects around it, that yellow is going to affect everything else around it.

[00:02:52]It's going to be bouncing off of everything else. And if you have, let's say, a red object kind of next to it, that red is going to affect the lemon.

[00:03:00]It's going to affect the ground. It's going to affect everything else around it, just like that lemon's affecting everything else around it. So all the colors, they're just bouncing off of one another. So even though the red might not look yellow really at all, it does have some yellow in it. Has some aspects of yellow in it. So everything is influencing one another. So each and every color is part of a larger system.

[00:03:25]Just like you and I are influenced by our environment and everything that is around us, so are colors. And when we start to think and see color in this way, it opens up a completely different way of seeing and using and mixing color in your own painting. As you start to develop this way of seeing color as a whole, where all colors are affecting one another, stay away from trying to match colors exactly. So, what I mean by that is let's say again you're painting this lemon and you mix up this color yellow and you place on your palette knife or brush or whatever you're using, you place that that yellow mixture right next to your subject matter and try to see, okay, does the color match or not?

[00:04:08]Do I need to adjust it? Um, stay away from that. That's not going to help you.

[00:04:13]Doing that will just make a painting feel more flat. What matters is how the colors behave next to one another. So, it's not about matching colors, but building relationships between colors.

[00:04:26]For example, if I were painting this lemon and I kind of try to match these colors exactly um the lemon and getting all those yellows and different shades of yellows exactly how I how they are kind of in the actual lemon and matching them. I might have something, you know, that looks decent on its own and like but once it kind of is in an actual painting, it's just going to look like a paper cutout lemon. It's not going to be um part of the surrounding environment.

[00:04:53]It's not going to live and breathe kind of in that space. It's going to seem and feel foreign. But when I start thinking in terms of relationships and adjusting temperature, color, and value to work in harmony with one another, that's when things start coming together. And this is exactly what Vermeere understood so well. He was not trying to literally match color. He was using color to create specific effects across the entire painting. For example, like adding that ultramarine blue into those wood beams, not because they're blue, but because adding that color helped the entire painting as a whole. It created greater harmony across the entire painting and helped all the colors work together. And this is where things start to get a little bit uncomfortable because often the colors that make a painting work are not the colors that we instinctively want to use. Let me show you what I mean. Now, if I'm mixing a shadow for this lemon, my instinct might be to just darken the yellow with something like a brown. But instead, I'm going to use purple. And I'm going to do this because I understand how color works. And that is a crucial element to being able to think outside the box with color. Purple is the complimentary color of yellow. So therefore, it's going to help me mute it. And I use a darker purple on purpose so that it will not just mute my yellow, but it's also going to darken it. I know it sounds a bit odd to use yellow with purple, but try it.

[00:06:27]It's exactly what gives that color depth and what it needs. Um, but it doesn't end there. I don't just mix in purple and it's done. Um, there are more colors that kind of need to be put in often and it depends on what part of the shadow you're working with. And sometimes when you mix in purple with yellow, it can turn a bit green. So then you need to mix in a little bit of red and maybe you need to cool it down a little bit. Then you need to mix in a bit of blue. So all that to say, it isn't just um simple where you just mix in one other color.

[00:06:57]It's uh it's complex, but when you understand how color works, it's it's a much more easier process. You're just problem solving. You have the tools on you. You just need to go through the process of figuring out the mixture.

[00:07:12]Now, if you want to learn more about how color works, I have a completely free color mixing artist guide. I will put a link for that below. Um so, you can just download that and again, it's completely free. And then I also have a very comprehensive color mixing master guide that is very in-depth and you'll learn everything about how color works and how to mix whatever color you'll ever need.

[00:07:36]Again, I'll put a link to that below as well if you're interested. And when you're figuring out a mixture, a color mixture, don't just ask yourself, what color is this? But instead ask, what does this color need? Does it need to be warmer or cooler? Does it need to be lighter or darker? Does it need to be pushed back or brought forward? Asking yourself those questions about a color is what's going to really help lead you to figure out what colors to mix into it and to be creative about it and to really let loose on whatever color helps you to reach those goals is going to be the color that you're going to put into your mixture. And again, we do this because color doesn't exist on its own.

[00:08:16]It only makes sense in relation to everything else around it. And this is what Vermeere understood so deeply. He wasn't limited by the idea of what a color was supposed to be. He pushed it further. He adjusted it and thought about it in ways that were not obvious, but weren't exactly what the painting needed. Now, Vermeere was, of course, exceptionally sensitive to light and color and optical phenomena in general.

[00:08:43]And he realized early in his career that when he would mix genuine ultramarine blue with shades of gray for the shadows, he would be able to replicate kind of the intense um sense of daylight better than anything else could. And this is something that no one else around him was doing. No one else was using costly ultramarine blue kind of in shadow areas. Um, but Vermeier was because he kind of could see that it made such a difference in replicating and creating this strong and believable sense of light. And this honestly wasn't being practiced until years and years and years later by the French impress French impressionists who kind of systematically used um ultraming blue in shadows. So, as we've already established, Vermeir was seeing and using color very differently. But how and how can we do that as well? Now, Vermeier was not using better or different colors than everyone else around him. He was seeing differently.

[00:09:46]And he wasn't limited by what something was supposed to be. He would observe really closely, probably closer than the other people around him, and notice subtle shifts and respond to them in ways that were not obvious. The good news is that this is something that we can actually learn. And on top of that, we have much better access to materials and tools and colors than Vermeier ever did. And ultramarine blue is not rare anymore thanks to a synthetically developed version of the real ultramarine blue. So the problem is not axis. We have plenty of that. Um all of us do. But rather it's learning how to see and understanding color and how to use it. And one of the quickest ways to start doing that is to slow down how quickly you label colors. For example, when you see something, don't just think right away, oh, that's red or that's green or purple or whatever color it is.

[00:10:48]Instead, ask yourself more questions about the color. And asking yourself the temperature is the best way to start doing that. Asking yourself, is it warmer or cooler? Because when you ask yourself those questions, that's going to lead you down the pathway of just figuring out what colors to mix into it to to go deeper with that color to create something more complex, more interesting. Um, and for example, when I was painting my yellow lemon, um, you know, when we just look at the lemon, it's like, oh yeah, it's yellow, but there's so much more to that color than just yellow. Um there's areas that need to be warmer, cooler, and all those things. And there were some areas that I kind of was like, "Okay, is this um what does this need? This is a bit warmer, this yellow. Okay. Um I'll mix in a little bit of red, maybe some orange. Um you know, small amounts of course cuz it's still yellow, but there's more to the color than it just being yellow.

[00:11:49]It's um has temperature differences.

[00:11:51]Then there's other areas that maybe need a little bit more blue because they're cooler. mix in a little bit of blue or maybe a small amount of green to that yellow and and so so on and so forth. So all these changes kind of around and this is what gets you started down that path is to ask yourself those temperature questions and just again slow down, don't label and ask yourself warmer or cooler. And if you want more help understanding how color actually works, again I have that free color mixing artist guide. It's completely free. Again, the link is just below. Um because when you understand how color really works, you become quite confident in just using color and just really being able to um just play around with color and try and kind of mixing different colors with each other.

[00:12:39]Experiment and just doing mixtures that you never thought would really work or be possible. And then it just leads to something completely new and different.

[00:12:49]and you think outside of the box because you're not trying to match colors anymore, but you're actually using color this time. You're not constrained by the thought of what something is supposed to be. You're thinking completely outside of that and you're creating art. Thank you so much for watching this video and a big thank you to so many of you that have left just so many wonderful comments on my videos. I've just really appreciated it. read every single one of them. And if you have any questions today or comments, please leave those in the comment section. Again, I I read all of them and really enjoy hearing from you. I'll see you in the next video.