Introduction
and a bit about color mixing
Hello and thank you for joining me on this new journey. I hope to make it very much worth your while. Instead of a lot of nonsense about me, let me tell you some things about color theory. This first post is fairly basic if you’re an advanced artist, but some of the points and future posts may surprise you. At least I hope they will.
And now, on to the colors.
Color wheels are very helpful - to understand 1) how colors fit together and 2) how to mix them. However, wheels you can view or buy today, have a few serious misleading issues. I’d like to show you what’s good, and what is bad, about modern color wheels. This will make your life as an artist more enjoyable.
The Good
Wheels help you remember opposites and complementary colors.
Wheels help artists understand different kinds of color schemes.
The Bad
Wheels dramatically over-simplify colors.
They leave out several critical colors artists need to understand.
When used as guides for mixing opposites, they can greatly frustrate artists.
Don’t worry though. You can solve these 3 problems very easily.
The Fix
First, I need to explain that there are two completely different ways to think about color wheels and color theory. One is for color schemes, where artists put all kinds of different variations of colors together. The other is for mixing specific pigments, where artists create the colors they want (to use for their color schemes). Different artists use different pigment groups, typically called a palette.
Color wheels should be Plural. From now on, think of all color wheels’ designations as groups of colors, instead of in the singular, ie: reds, greens, blues, purples, etc.
Remember the missing colors. There are actually two kinds of basic primary reds and two kinds of basic primary blues. You can’t make a magenta out of a bright red and you can’t produce a super-intense red using magenta and yellow. You also can’t make cerulean blue from ultramarine or vice versa. Most wheels don’t address the complexity of these “extra” colors very well or at all.
Work with an established palette. Never think of these plural groups as having anything to do with specific pigments and with mixing opposites. Some pigments do not get along with certain others. Find a teacher or instructions that use a tried-and-true mixing palette.
A complementary color is not a compliment from one color to another. Complementary with an “e” means to complete. The word complement is used for colors in the same two ways I’ve mentioned. One is to talk about color schemes. Any blue and any orange can be termed as complementary to each other for a color scheme.
The other usage is for mixing. So, most people have heard at some point in time, that complementary colors create neutrals when mixed together. While true, this statement only applies to certain versions of complementary pigments, and this will not work well for many combinations. So it works, and it doesn’t work, depending on what tubes of paints you have. Hence the frustration.
In actuality…
Certain complementary pigments create great neutrals when mixed together.
This is when following a teacher is super helpful. Every artist needs to use a successful palette. Just buying any old set of colors will generally produce difficulties. Beginners often purchase pigments that don’t work well together, and then end up buying more and more colors, ending with many that are pre-mixed and closer to the colors they’re trying to make.
I once counseled an advanced artist who sold his work in several galleries. He painted for much longer than he wanted, because he was always fighting his colors. He came in that first day, complaining about how paints were so crazy hard to figure out.
He then pulled up his giant plastic tub and dumped out around 70 tubes of paints! Only a few were the same colors, but they were all covered in smudges and un-recognizable one from the other. As he painted he kept looking for “the color I want”, and would squeeze out a little bit of several dozen tubes looking for it. He actually didn’t like painting as much he used to, because of all the stress of looking for a color.
Mixing colors using an established palette will give you a simple set of pigments and will result in tens of thousands of colors for you to work with - far more than you can find in a bin. It does take work to learn any palette, but the rewards are so worth it.
I intend to cover mixing paints in these pages using my preferred palette of 10 pigments. Come back often! Until then, I hope you enjoy creating, because the world needs happy artists.
Dennas