1. The Questions
Gamut Masking is presented by James Gurney for the first time in his book, “Color and Light”. Gamut Masking is basically a method to limit your color palette to achieve color harmony. James Gurney talked alot about the benefits of using gamut mask because sometimes when one starts out a painting it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the colors to use.
When I first encountered this chapter in his book and then later on his blog, I’d rather confused on how to use it on digital medium, not to mention that Gurney introduced different shapes as the masking for the gamut. Which shape should I use? And most importantly, WHEN should I use it?
Let’s talk about what Gurney said on his blog regarding this topic. He wrote three separate parts of articles in his blog explaining this method. I want to talk about the first part when he compared his plein-air painting without gamut masking and with gamut masking.
On the first painting, Gurney didn’t use gamut masking. The painting itself looks beautiful. It has a natural color scheme because Gurney didn’t limit himself on a certain color scheme like two below it. He saw the colors in real life and translate it into his sketchbook. He captures the colors as what it is.
Now let’s take a look at these two “color-graded” paintings. They used two different gamut masking, the left one towards yellow, and the right one towards blue. These paintings has its own mood or temperature. One is hot and dusty, and the other feels cold and sad. It’s like applying filters or color balance. James Gurney decribed gamut masking is similar with color grading.
So, this is where the question came to me:
Do we need to learn gamut masking as a digital artist?
If gamut masking is all about color shifting or so we called “color balance” in Photoshop, does this method still have its benefit? If I can change the colors freely in Photoshop, do gamut masking still have a play in digital medium?
The answer is,
Yes.
Gamut masking maybe not as useful as a color shifter, but what gamut masking really benefits us as a digital painter is its perk of color harmony.
Where using color balance is not necessarily harmonious, with gamut masking, harmony is a given.
2. The Masks
I have a hard time to find color harmony and color combination for my paintings. What I found out is the common color harmony theory such as Analogous, Triadic, Split-Complementer, etc., they aren’t really helping because these color harmony doesn’t give you a scope of an important element of color, which is saturation.
With gamut masking, you’re not only limiting your colors, but it also gives you a limit of the intensity of each colors you can put on your painting.
First of, in Gurney’s book and blog he’s using this color wheel by Tobey Sanford, so I’m gonna use it as well.
On the gamut masking on the left, you can see that the pimary colors, which are turtoise (A), magenta (B), and red (C). But you can see the limit of intensity where A will not have the same intensity as B and C.
Even if you make a equilateral triangle as a masking, you will always have a harmony, because you still have range of secondary colors to balance it, which are colors along the straight connecting lines between primaries (ab, bc, ac).
From his book and article, there is one easy shape to use to achieve color harmony, which is triangle. With triangle you will have an atmospheric triad which certainly will give you color harmony.
If you isolate the colors around half of the color wheel, you can have an atmospheric triad which will have moody colors. (Figure 1).
If you scale down the isolation of colors even more, you can have a rather atmospheric and monotonous color scheme (Figure 2).
If you make the triangle like this, you can have a balanced color scheme with one powerful intensity primary color. This is useful for giving a certain color code for a character or a group of people (Figure 3).
If you put the triangles that spread across the middle grey area, it will have more colors, contrast, temprature, and thus less monotonous (Figure 4).
Isolate one triangle on one side of the color wheel and one circle on the other will give you an atmospheric triad with accent color (Figure 5).
You can have any shapes to mask your color wheel.
You can have a stretched diamond shape if you want an analogous color scheme (Figure 6).
Or even these weird-ass shapes, doesn’t even matter.
For me, the most important thing is to pick one primary color first. I’ll talk about how I use this method, but I personally will use triangle or diamond shape for most of the time because it’s just simple and doesn’t involve too many colors.
To answer my earlier questions and confusion, I also did some sketches using gamut masking.
3. The Answers
The most profound thing when I tried to use gamut masking is that I can pick color more easily then ever. Even if I just put random triangle shapes on the color wheel, or go to the extreme and weird color combination, it merried well and felt complete. As James Gurney said, when you use this method, harmony and unity are a given, they’re built into the process
So, let’s answer the two questions that occured in my mind, when to use it and how to use it. What I’m gonna say next is kinda confusing but bear with me.
WHEN to use it?
Gamut masking is a technique to find an alternative of colors or to direct an image into a certain mood. The ideal moment to use gamut masking are:
- When you want to explore alternative color schemes from a painting.
- When you want your image to have a spesific mood yet you want to make it balanced and harmonious.
- When you want to try a weird color scheme but you also want to make sure it doesn’t go too jarring.
- When you don’t know what colors you should pick for a painting.
For a natural lighting and colors, I personally will not use gamut masking, I would prefer to just look at photo reference or real life.
HOW I use it?
If you just want to explore color scheme randomly, you can just put whatever shape you want and that’s your color scheme, right? Or maybe rotate the shape that you used earlier.
But let‘s back up a little bit. Let’s say you have an idea to make an image that has a cool and magical feel.
What you should do next is to think one color that is closest to that feeling. It can be blue, turquoise, or purple.
Let’s take turquoise.
And then you choose one of the shape that I’ve mentioned above and you point out turquoise color to have the highest intensity, and the triangle or whatever shape you choose will pick another colors for you. You can use those colors.
What amazing about gamut masking is you can see overall completion and harmony of colors even before you put them down into your paintings.
Or, the other way is more like freestyle kinda way. Maybe you already have in mind that you want an orange color complement to turquoise. Now, do you want another color besides these two? If yes, you can make three dots between these three colors and it will from a shape or a masking. Be careful though, you don’t want all your colors to have full intensity.
To apply these colors scheme digitally, there are two ways you can do:
- The Color-Strings Way
This is where you put the colors to the canvas. You put all your primary colors and make each colors the darker and lighter version. Finally you can pick these colors to paint. It’s more similar to traditional.
But I personally think this way won’t work effectively and intuitively for digital artist. It works well for traditional artists but a little stiff for digital artists way of working.
2. The Freestyle Way
After you decided your gamut masking, you analyze it and you just kinda look at it. You look at the limit of hues you will use. You look at the limit of saturation of each hues.
And that’s it, you kinda give yourself a reminder that the primaries are turquoise, purple, and orange. You also remind yourself that turquoise will have the highest intensity where purple and orange are more neutral.
This method gives you a big picture of the whole colors you will use without restricting you to use another color if needed. It’s less spesific, but it gives you a finishing point of a whole. I used this method when I painted those countryside house. I like the freedom that I get from this method and not restricted on just picking spesific colors on my swatches.
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And those my friend are my opinions on gamut masking. Gamut masking is super awesome, but I think we also want to hold its power as digital artist, that’s why I feel I need to write this down.
For more readings about gamut masking, you can buy James Gurney’s book, Color and Light.
You can also read this article by James Gurney about gamut masking.
Also, check out this online gamut mask by Richard Robinson.
Lastly, what do you think about gamut masking? How does it impact your color scheme? For digital artists, does this article helps you? I’m still learning too, so if there’s something you agreed or disagreed, let’s have a real conversation in the comments below. You can always reach me through Facebook, Instagram, and Artstation.
Peace out!
