Color is the most expressive and infectious artistic language in oil painting, and it is an important means for artists to express their inner experiences and thoughts and feelings. The clever use of color plays a vital role in the artistic expression of oil painting. In this regard, the author starts with the basic definition of color, analyzes the performance characteristics of color in contemporary oil painting, and discusses the application mode of color in oil painting for reference.

First, the basic overview of color

Color is one of the most important expressive languages in oil painting creation, and it is also one of the elements with the most visual impact, stimulation and influence. It bears and embodies human aesthetic psychology and ideas. In the artistic creation of oil painting, color is the blood and soul of oil painting. Once the oil painting loses its color, it will become pale and powerless. Flexible and clever use of color can show life more truly, accurately, vividly and vividly, reflect reality, and make works more artistic and appealing.

Color can make a series of changes in people's thinking and psychology, thus producing unique aesthetic feelings and emotional experiences. Any work embodies the painter's unique artistic concept, emotional thinking, aesthetic consciousness, subjective construction, artistic feeling and personality experience, thus forming the painter's unique color style. Color can express the image of freedom. Painters are good at using keen intuition and rich imagination, conveying their emotional concepts and inner thoughts with colors and images, highlighting their self-spirit, so that the appreciator has a spiritual voice, is influenced by beauty and inspired by thoughts, and enters the aesthetic realm. It can be seen that color has unparalleled artistic function and unique artistic charm in other painting languages. It serves the artist's creative concept, aesthetic concept and subjective emotion, and is an important means for artists to express their emotional will, inner experience and thoughts.

Second, the performance characteristics of color in contemporary oil painting

1. Nationality of skin color

Nationalization of oil painting has always been a topic of great concern and an irresistible trend. For a long time, China's oil paintings have been faced with the problem of finding a way out and direction. Many oil painters in China have always believed that in order to develop and break through China's oil painting art, it is necessary to explore a unique painting direction that is integrated with national cultural heritage and cultural thoughts, has China characteristics and can be recognized by the public. During the development of China's oil painting, many national oil painters appeared, which greatly promoted the continuous development of China's oil painting. For example, the realistic oil paintings of Wu Zuoren, a famous oil painter, such as Negative Water Girl and Tibetan Child, have simple and rich pictures, bright and harmonious colors and distinctive national characteristics. Dong's work "founding ceremony" successfully inherited the decorative style of murals in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. The blue sky, red columns, palace lanterns, Jin Ju, tiles and a brand-new purple carpet in the picture reflect the distinctive national characteristics and have a strong national color.

2. Planarity of color

Looking at contemporary oil paintings, it is not difficult to find that there is a tendency to flatten colors more or less. As the painting language of oil painting, color flattening is widely used in contemporary oil painting in China. It has the irreplaceable advantages of three-dimensional language, and it is the closest expression of emotion in visual art, which gives people a strong sensory impact and can clearly present the artist's inner feelings to the audience. At present, color flattening is a development trend of oil painting art creation, and it is also a positive exploration of artistic expression. Many oil painting artists prefer to organize and form pictures with the relationship of plane colors. This artistic expression not only combines the aesthetic feelings and principles of the ethnic groups in our country, but also is full of traditional cultural flavor, which conforms to the traditional aesthetic tendency of Chinese people and the world trend, and plays a positive role in promoting the integration of China oil paintings into the world.

3. The authenticity of color

The realism of color emphasizes the pursuit of natural light and realism. Based on the scientific color principle, through the comprehensive application of light source color, intrinsic color, environmental color, spatial color and other conditional colors, the shape, space and texture of objective objects can be truly reproduced. In oil painting creation, paying attention to the realism of color helps to create an immersive atmosphere, thus enhancing the appeal of artistic image. For example, Luo Zhongli, a famous contemporary oil painter in China, successfully portrayed a simple, kind and simple image of a farmer's father who is full of hope, optimism and strong willpower in his oil painting Father through subtle brushwork. The colors in the picture are realistic and delicate, saturated and heavy, plump and moist, solemn and touching, profound and rich in connotation, which gives people a strong spiritual shock. Facing the loess, black and thin face, rutted wrinkles, gray sweat on the brow, deep eyes, confused and sincere eyes, dirt under nails, shabby and shabby tea bowls, these images are full of strong local flavor, which reflects the author's respect and praise for the workers in life. This kind of realistic expression gives great vitality to the work, makes the image of father more vivid, real and flesh-and-blood, and it is easier to arouse people's inner emotional ripples, ignite people's long-standing enthusiasm and touch people's heartstrings. When we stare at the image of our father in the sun, the meaning of the work is no longer limited to expressing the strength of farmers, but a symbol of the human soul.

4. Emotion of color

The purpose of oil painting creation is to express emotion, and color is an important carrier of emotional thoughts in oil painting creation. Different colors can express different emotional information and make people have different inner feelings. For example, red gives people the feeling of enthusiasm, warmth, fierceness and anger; _ _ Yellow gives people a bright, lively and noble feeling; White gives people a quiet, simple and innocent feeling; Black gives people a feeling of gloom, depression, gloom and fear; Purple gives people a mysterious, melancholy and quiet feeling. In oil painting creation, the creative subject's personality is different, his understanding of color is different, and the color choice used to express his inner feelings will be different, so his thoughts and feelings are also different. For example, Van Gogh, a Dutch post-impressionist painter, likes to express his desire for life with brilliant yellow. In his work Sunflower, yellow, light blue and powerful brushstrokes show the dance expression of flowers and the rich and heavy texture of sunflower seeds, which is full of rhythm and vitality. At the same time, Van Gogh is better at expressing his inner world and expressing specific psychological emotions with strong color contrast. Take "selfie with a tube tied to your ear" as an example. In this self-portrait, he expressed his regret, distress and dreary feelings through the contrast between red background and green clothes and eyes, and the contrast between orange and blue hat at the top of the background. For another example, Wang Yidong, a realistic oil painter in China, is obsessed with using China Red to express his feelings and strengthen the expression of the theme. In his series of works, Old Mountain Village, Mengshan Morning Fog, Two Haunted Houses Lucky Smoke, Winter Sunshine and Yimeng Bride, red is used to set off the festive and peaceful atmosphere of the picture.

Third, the application of color in oil painting creation

1. Correctly handle the relationship between hue and emotion.

Emotion is an individual's subjective reflection on the external objective living environment. As a visual art, oil painting is not only to make the picture look more harmonious, but more importantly, it can truly reveal the inner world and emotional experience of the creator. Therefore, it can be said that color is an important sustenance of oil painting artists' inner feelings and subjective spirit. An excellent oil painting should not only have rich, delicate and ever-changing colors, but also have real feelings. Many excellent oil painting artists are good at freely transforming objective things and subjective emotions, discovering and studying the inevitable relationship between a certain color and people's psychological emotions from life, and then expressing these emotions and emotions with appropriate colors. Therefore, in the artistic creation of oil painting, the creator must correctly handle the relationship between tone and emotion, grasp the skills of tone application, and then choose the appropriate tone to express the emotional picture, so that the oil painting works are rich in connotation and soul, and then arouse the audience's emotion. For example, the oil painting "Late Bell" by the French realistic painter Miller depicts the scene of dusk covering the earth in a hazy warm gray tone. In a field far away from the village, a peasant couple put down their farm work with the church bells, bowed their heads and prayed silently with pious and grateful hearts, wishing a safe day. The painter handled the warm color of the picture very properly, which was delicate and full of emotion. The afterglow of the sunset, the farmer holding his breath and the silent earth set each other off. The whole picture is dignified, quiet and serene, and ordinary colors highlight sincere, sincere and simple feelings.

2. Grasp the image sense and subjective expression of color.

In artistic creation, image refers to the artistic image formed by the mutual blending of objective things and subjective feelings. The sense of image in color mainly emphasizes the artistic beauty of an artistic expression. Freehand brushwork is an artistic expression of oil painting creation. It does not pay attention to the true reproduction of the objective image, but to the inner charm of the objective image and the subjective feelings of the creator. Many artists do not rely entirely on color to express their subjective feelings on the screen, but try to find colors that can express their creative intentions around the theme of their works, choose the images needed by the screen, and fully express the captured subjective feelings and artistic images in their own artistic language, thus forming a unique artistic beauty. For example, the long black lines that appear repeatedly in Wu Guanzhong's "Mending the Net" are moderate in thickness and have a strong oriental implicit beauty, leaving only a few unfinished strokes; Images such as dark sky and earth, crescent moon, sparse reed and endless dark gray river coexist in reality. The clever combination of dark color and dark gray creates a sad, desolate and sad aesthetic mood, which conveys the author's loneliness, melancholy and sadness.

3. Showing distinctive characteristics of the times and life breath.

The creation of oil painting is inseparable from the specific regional environment and social background, so the color of oil painting is full of distinctive flavor of the times. In the west, oil painting color has experienced three stages of development: classicism, romanticism and realism. At different stages, the color of oil painting presents different artistic styles. Classical oil painting pursues grand and solemn artistic style, with rigorous modeling and extremely delicate changes in light and shade; Romantic oil painting emphasizes the diversity of composition, the dynamic picture, the strong contrast of colors, the unrestrained and smooth brushwork, the respect for nature and the expression of inner feelings; Realistic oil painting pays attention to the accuracy of modeling and the authenticity of color tone, and emphasizes the true expression of social life and people of different classes. In China, especially after the outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, many oil painting artists took oil painting as a weapon and actively participated in anti-Japanese and national salvation propaganda activities. Their works have bright colors, which reflect the voice of the times and lay a good foundation for the breakthrough and development of oil painting art. Wu Zuoren's Invisible Life, Wang Shikuo's A Bloody Battle in Taierzhuang and Tang Yihe's Victory and Peace all have distinct characteristics of the times, which carry forward the spirit of patriotism and reflect people's yearning for a new life and the expression of productive feelings.

Different from realistic oil painting, realistic oil painting embodies a strong sense of the times, is closer to the lifestyle and social outlook of the creator's era, and pays attention to reflecting the artist's heartfelt true feelings about contemporary social life in the connotation of the works. For example, Xin Dongwang, a contemporary realistic painter in China, truly reflects the social life and spiritual outlook in the new period. The new generation painter Liu Xiaodong's Bathroom, Wedding Banquet, Father and Daughter all depict the ordinary daily life of ordinary people in the simplest colors. The picture is true, unpretentious and full of rich flavor of the times and life.

In short, the role of color in oil painting can not be ignored. In the process of oil painting creation, the creator should master the skills of color application, skillfully exert the artistic expression of color, and make the work full of connotation and vitality.