Gaye’s Studio News

The joy of colour

Fascinated as I am with colour and how it can be used, over the years,

on other artists and tutors recommendations, I occasionally prepared gridded colour charts thinking they might be useful.  Some have been and some have not.

There are so many variables apart from the various hues and their mixes, there is also the complexity of transparent and opaque colours, thin and thick paint.  So much to learn!  

I have a number of books dedicated to the science of colour but they haven’t been really helpful. You can’t develop skills looking at books, you have to experiment, analyse and compare to learn.  So while color chart making can be meditative and produce something tangible to admire, it may not be of any use in making a painting.

For example the image above is of various greens and yellows, mixed in a methodical way from 6 yellow/golds and 8 blues(incl plain black). Very pretty and interesting but how do you apply this in a painting?

Most of the variations are not natural landscape looking greens. And in each mix there are many variations depending on the proportion of yellow to blue.  The last column uses black  But that is only part of the story.

With each of these mixes you could add a little white or black to increase the possibilities. And there is more. By adding a touch of the complementary colour (which is red or brown in this case) you can widen the number of colours even more.

The next example is from Marc Dalessio. Experience this on his Youtube  channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyJF0BycTlQ

Marc’s video shows another way to develop greens, suitable to all aspects of a landscape painting. He works mainly in Europe where the colours may be different to Tasmania.

I find him fascinating more so as he is skilled in painting actual ‘sight size’ paintings. If the artist stands back a metre or so from the easel, the  painting merges into the landscape. Highly skilful.

The second image is the key to the green colour chart. The central column is the basic mixes of ultramarine, cerulean or cobalt blue mixed with yellow ochre, and yellow medium or light. Then working out to the right adding more yellow and white to the mix and to the left adding more red to neutralise the greens. A simplified description on my part

Many landscape artists develop a basic mix of a couple of colours eg viridian and burnt sienna then adjust this basic mix to warm it up with yellow ochre or cool it down to  create perspective or the illusion of distance. There are some blacks shown created with the basic mix plus ultramarine blue as well.

Something useful I do is to create colour sheets comparing the various colours I have in my paint box and adding increasing amounts of white of black to the mix. As you can see from the image above the pure colours are across the centre of the page and white added above.  A touch of black is added below then this is lightened.  I have done this with all my paints and it helps  me understand how colours appear, behave and differ.

About five years ago when I started to focus on abstract work, I moved to working with a limited palette; that is I selected only one blue, one red and one yellow to use in a painting. I found I prefer transparent to opaque colours.

Shown below are 3 of these palettes.

The top one is Indian red, Paynes Grey and raw sienna.

The second is Alizarin crimson, Indian yellow and ultramarine blue

The third is Rose madder, Indian yellow and Pthalo blue.

Having 6 to10 tubes in each basic colour group I think I could create 30-40 of these.  Each two of the three colours are mixed in various proportions(left side) and lightened with white moving to the right.

The possibilities for mixes seem to be infinite. Adding the chosen third colour into these two mixes will create more subtle or muted colours.

A painting will feel more integrated and have more unity if the colours are limited and created from just a few tubes.                  

What I tend to do now in selecting a colour palette for a painting is to look at any resources I have, select 3 colours I might use then play with them on a new piece of paper. In that way I can explore lots of possibilities, decide which of the colours should predominate and how rich, pure, subdued or neutral I would like them to be. It doesn’t mean I can’t continue to play when working on the painting, but it gives a starting point or guide.