Advanced Chromacolour Colour Mixing Made Easy
with Don Harrison

Choosing A Basic Selection Of Colours For Your Palette:The primary colours are the reds, yellows and blues that cannot be mixed from other colours, so they are essential. So which to choose? Most colours, including the primaries have an obvious warm or cool appearance - we tend to think of violet/blue/green colours as cool and red/orange/yellow as warm. So if our choice of primaries includes a cool and a warm version of each, this will allow us the flexibility to mix a wide range of colours. Remember that in painting, cool colours recede and warm colours advance so you can take advantage of these variations to give your work more depth. Here is a suggested starter palette that I use myself. You can vary it to suit your own style. My primaries are cadmium yellow (a warm orange/yellow) and lemon yellow (cool), cadmium red (warm) and alizarine crimson (cool - with a leaning towards violet). Ultramarine blue (a warm blue - also leaning towards violet) and cobalt blue (which is a mid blue, neither warm nor cool). A more logical choice would be cerulean blue which is a cool greenish/blue, but I prefer cobalt for general use and keep cerulean as one of my "additional" colours. It comes in useful for sunny summer skies because it has a very fresh bright appearance but it can be difficult for beginners to control. Other useful additional colours are raw sienna (or yellow ochre which is not quite as transparent), burnt sienna and burnt umber. These last two are handy for mixing with ultramarine blue, combinations that produce good dark blue/greys close to black. If in doubt, don't worry too much about the name of a colour - test its appearance and suitability for yourself by eye. Select colours that suit your own taste but be sure to include at least one cool and one warm version of each primary. Green, orange and violet are not included because, using the above colours, it is easy to mix them from the other colours on the palette but by all means, add your own favourite colours and don't be afraid to experiment. For the moment the colours I am suggesting are those needed to paint in transparent style but if your preference is for opaque painting, you'll need lots of white to tone down the colours to make pastel shades. Chroma white is my choice for that.

Go to Next Page.......