I just ordered some oil paint online and it set me thinking about the colours I habitually use in a painting.
Quite a lot of green - naturally, landscapes - but looking at a folder of paintings it seems I have a favourite colour solution to just about every painting: green, yellow ochre, grey, and blue.
This isn't, I suspect, a bad thing. Other painters have their own favourite colour schemes, as can be confirmed by a casual look through a few books on painting.
I've been looking at David Briggs' website, to get a greater understanding of colour and how to use it. Ever since art college, I've used a colour solid as my conceptual toolkit for visualizing colours, and a warm/cool split palette for mixing them, but a recent reading of James Gurney's 'Colour and Light' had me reappraising my colour wheel.
The 'YURMBY' colour wheel he proposes adds cyan and magenta to the standard red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Finding a pigment match for a true magenta or cyan is the challenge, though with the addition of lemon yellow, just using these three as your primaries can help you, apparently, mix the greatest gamut of colours.
I might try a floral piece to give some of those pure primaries a workout. Most things I see when I'm out walking around here and looking for subjects are some variation on that green/ ochre/ grey/ blue chord. Trees, dirt, clouds, sky. Grass, fields, road...sky. It does give a calm, restful feel to the finished painting, but I think a change might be in order.
I find I have to work on colour and tone consciously, whereas drawing and composition come more easily. Which brings up a whole new set of questions, about whether it's best to play to your strengths or work on your weaknesses, but I'm too tired and intellectually challenged to go into that right now.
Quite a lot of green - naturally, landscapes - but looking at a folder of paintings it seems I have a favourite colour solution to just about every painting: green, yellow ochre, grey, and blue.
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| Would also make a nice sweater. |
This isn't, I suspect, a bad thing. Other painters have their own favourite colour schemes, as can be confirmed by a casual look through a few books on painting.
I've been looking at David Briggs' website, to get a greater understanding of colour and how to use it. Ever since art college, I've used a colour solid as my conceptual toolkit for visualizing colours, and a warm/cool split palette for mixing them, but a recent reading of James Gurney's 'Colour and Light' had me reappraising my colour wheel.
The 'YURMBY' colour wheel he proposes adds cyan and magenta to the standard red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Finding a pigment match for a true magenta or cyan is the challenge, though with the addition of lemon yellow, just using these three as your primaries can help you, apparently, mix the greatest gamut of colours.
I might try a floral piece to give some of those pure primaries a workout. Most things I see when I'm out walking around here and looking for subjects are some variation on that green/ ochre/ grey/ blue chord. Trees, dirt, clouds, sky. Grass, fields, road...sky. It does give a calm, restful feel to the finished painting, but I think a change might be in order.
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| My tube of unfinished red paint is probably older than most of your children. And perhaps even you. |
I find I have to work on colour and tone consciously, whereas drawing and composition come more easily. Which brings up a whole new set of questions, about whether it's best to play to your strengths or work on your weaknesses, but I'm too tired and intellectually challenged to go into that right now.
