I have been looking through Petar’s work alot lately and it is truly amazing to watch the progression in his art from his older work to his newer stuff. You can actually see the evolution in his brushwork from painting to painting. Though brushwork is not the focus of today’s image. Today, I want to point out the relationship between saturated and unsaturated colors. In this piece called the Noble Dragon, you can see how Petar has used saturation to help divide the positive and negative space of this piece. The wings and body of the dragon, along with the rider and winged horse make up the positive space of the piece. In that area is where all the action is happening. The movement is there. The ferocity of the dragon is there. The rest…well we don’t care. That isn’t true, the negative space provides wandering area for the eye to explorer. Just when it becomes too much to stare into the jaws of this monster any longer, you can turn your gaze to the wonderful little waves below. Too calm now? Look up and BANG! Bright saturated blues and reds and yellows. Primary colors none the less. This elevated level of saturation helps hold your interest at the focus point of the image and allows the rest to recede off into the supporting environment. If the water was a deeper, richer, bluer hue, what would happen? You’d be looking at the water because the rods and cones in our eyes are more stimulate for more saturated color. It is more “exciting” as it were. So Petar keeps all the most important information, all the exciting colors at or near the focal paint and the action of the image. Keep that in mind next time, you decide to render that little bird in the tree in the corner with cad red light.