Getting to know your paint - how does it react? - how to mix?
It is now time to become familiar with your paint.
Paint is made by mixing pigment with a binding agent. In both tubes and pans this binding is gum arabic. The pigments themselves come from a variety of resources from plant, animal, natural earth and metals. In student quality paints some of these are reproduced synthetically.
You may come across a number of terms relating to paint so I will list these briefly.
HUE - Is pure colour. The term is also used by paint manufacturers and denotes colours not made from the usual pigment (mostly student quality). For example cobalt blue (hue) is likely to be produced by mixing ultramarine pigment with white, and not cobalt which is a more expensive material.
TINT - Is produced by adding white to a colour. In watercolour we produce a tint by adding water.
SHADE - Is produced by adding black. In watercolour we produce shade by introducing the contrasting colour to our paint.
NEUTRAL - Is a colour which has been dulled, greyed, muted or knocked back so that it is no longer a 'pure' hue. Mixing a pair of complimentary colours such as red with green will produce a neutral brown to grey.
There are several ways of mixing colours each giving different effects. But always use clean water first, adding the predominant colour second and if necessary the second colour third. This method will cause less wastage and also if you add water to the paint, particularly with tubes there is a tendency for the paint to not mix in properly.
Three of the simplest mixing methods are demonstrated below.
The first is to mix in a palette and then apply to the paper. Second is to lay down the colours individually in thin layers of washes, allowing each to dry before adding the next. The third is to wet the paper with clean water and drop the colours onto the water allowing them to blend in to each other.
You may feel that with just twelve colours you do not have a large range to choose from. Create a table similar to the one below for your own colours and fill in the squares with equal mixes of the colour combinations. The quickest way to do this is to apply pure colour in thin washes over the rows and columns marked with that name. The thin washes will allow the light to reflect from the paper underneath through the coloured layers. And of course this just shows equal mixtures, there are infinite possibilities when combining two colours.
In this chart I also studied the staining qualities of each individual paint. When the chart is completely dry run a diagonal line through the unmixed boxes with a damp brush and blot with toilet tissue. You will find that some colours will lift out quite cleanly leaving white paper below others will have stained. This is useful information if you are looking to correct mistakes in a painting. And also at the top a tonal table more of this later on. You can repeat this exercise by mixing the colours in the palette and also by dropping the wet colours onto the paper.
Another colour mixing exercise that you may like to try is to paint graduated strips, the first colour light to dark, and the second dark to light working over the top of the first. The result is a bar of colour where the primaries values are varied to each other. In the example below with alizarin crimson and ultramarine the result is a range of mauve from a red mauve to a blue mauve.
I think everyone knows that everyone knows that there are three primary colours, being red, blue and yellow. When two primaries are mixed together they become 'secondary' colours i.e..
Red + Blue = Purple
Red + Yellow = Orange
Blue + Yellow = Green
If three primaries are mixed the result is a 'tertiary' colour, and they are nearly always greys and browns. It is not advisable to mix more than three primary colours as the results are invariably muddy and tired. This is true whichever mixing technique that you use.
You may have heard of colours described as warm, cool and neutral colours.
The top left hand of the chart shows warm colours of yellow, red and their secondary oranges. Although a colour can be described as warm or cool there are variations for example red is a warm colour but cadmium red is warmer than alizarin crimson.
The bottom right shows the cooler greens and coldest blues. But again ultramarine can be called a warm blue because of it's bias towards red.
The browns and greys can be called neutral but each one will have a bias towards a warm or cool colour.
The way you use colour in a painting is important.
Cool and pale colours appear to recede and have a calming influence on the viewer. Used as pale washes in the background blues and greens will give a painting depth and an illusion of space. Used more strongly in the middle and foreground they give a freshness to the image.
Warm colours give the illusion of coming forward. The reds and yellows excite the eye giving the painting energy. Used in the background, they will bring it forward and are useful when you do not want to convey a lot of distance in your painting for example when you describe the inside of a room perhaps in a still life, try using a pale burnt sienna with it's red bias for the walls.
A small amount of warm colour surrounded by cool colours will appear hotter, and the opposite is true of a small amount of cool colour surrounded by warmer colours.
Complementary colours placed side by side give a painting energy and vitality, in their contrast. Used carefully in the focal area of the painting they draw the viewers eye. Complementary colours are opposite each other on the colour wheel. Imagine an ordinary landscape scene, add a person wearing say blue and orange in the image and you have a focal point to draw the attention of the viewer, whereas before the eye roamed the landscape randomly. A complementary colour of a primary is a secondary created from the other two primaries.
Stare at the above square for fifteen seconds and then at a white piece of paper. The after image seen on the paper shows the complimentary colours of the above squares. A useful trick if you are in any doubt.
Analogous relationships refer to colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel sharing one primary as dominant. These produce a harmonious effect. Imagine a landscape with a dominant blue, blue green foliage with perhaps touches of blue purple flowers.
The limited palette
It is always tempting as a beginner faced with a box full of lovely new paints to use them all in a painting. But the results can be paintings that are too busy and confusing to the eye. It is far better to work with a limited palette. Choose just one primary for the dominant colour of your painting and mix harmonious secondaries by adding various amounts of the other two primaries. Finally introduce just a little complimentary of your dominant colour to liven up the painting.
A vast array of colours can be confusing to the eye.
Colour harmony. using just the three colours of Ultramarine as the dominant colour, mixing with alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow to produce the secondaries. Resulting in a more peaceful painting but lacking that something.
Using the same three colours, harmony is contrasted by the complementary mix of alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow, as a result the painting though harmonious also has life. Compare the colours of the flowers with blue or orange centres, see how the mauve appears more vibrant when placed with its complimentary i.e. orange as opposed to the blue and mauve. And yet they are all exactly the same colours, because I mixed the colours and painted the two pictures side by side.
Whilst all watercolour paints are truly transparent when water is added. Some are more transparent than others. Indeed some are described as opaque, a contradiction in terms that can confuse a beginner.
Some paints have a quality of granulating whilst drying, a useful property when painting rock formations. You may have noticed already on your palette that the ultramarine has begun to separate from the water when untouched for a while, it will also do this whilst drying on your paper. In addition you can buy 'Granulating Medium' which will increase this effect and cause it in pigments that are normally non-granulating themselves.
These properties vary between the manufacturers and the quality of students or artists. To test every paint on the market and advise you is beyond my means and studying these qualities is very much down to you.
Tonal values are usually expressed in a range from one to ten.
Trying to gauge the correct tonal value in your work can be tricky. Scanning a work in progress in grey scale when it does not look quite right will often reveal any mistakes.
But how as a beginner do you know the tonal range of your paints?
There are of course an infinite number of tones in nature but the human eye can only discern between six and nine. And in a painting these can be simplified to five or six. When studying a scene try squinting your eyes, this will filter out unnecessary detail and reduce the number of tones you can see.
This image shows a simple tonal table of black into greys
To identify the tonal range of your own paints create a column of ten boxes and paint the first one in a strong black. This will yield the darkest tone. In the second box use 9 parts black to one part water, in the third 8 parts black to 2 parts water. Continue in this way until you are using 1 part black to nine parts water by the last box, the lightest tone.
Now repeat the exercise with each of your individual colours. These can now be compared to the original black/grey scale to give the tonal values of each paint. If you have a scanner comparison can be done easier by scanning in greyscale.
Often beginners start a painting by using tones too dark in the background and are then unable to increase them in the foreground.
Copyright Jane Grainger 2004
