Local color
Local color , or local tone , in painting is the own, individual color tone of an object in its original, unbroken purity.
The local color is not influenced by the modeling or shading . The object color, i.e. the color of the object, is transferred to the picture. The changing, i.e. dampening or lifting effect in the overall tone or the appropriate adaptation does not apply to the local object, it is painted separately or mixed up. Shades of light and dark usually model strong plastic effects, the so-called body illusion. Late medieval painting often combines local colors with symbolic colors.
In contrast to the local color, the appearance color includes the color reflections of the surroundings, for example when the shaded side of a white vase on a blue tablecloth gets a blue sheen. The term room color describes the overall tone of a picture .
In the example image the objects and people appear in their “natural” color: the sky is blue, the leather-bound book in the lower right corner of the picture has a brown cover. The example image is in local colors. A symbolic content, as with the red cape, remains unaffected by this.