It’s easy to make your own color charts with your own
paints. The photo above shows one method of making a color chart. These are Winsor & Newton Artisan water
mixable oil paints. The company puts out
a chart too with teeny tiny photos of the colors. I drew straight lines with a ruler and
permanent marker on 9” X 12” gessoed canvas paper (these come in a pad and are
not too expensive).
Since I was just interested in seeing what the colors looked
like in a larger view, I did one chart for each group of colors. I also did one
for the neutrals, but it is not shown here.
Across the top row I wrote the color name and noted if the color was
opaque (“O”) or transparent (“T”). I
painted the actual colors in that color family on the second row. On the third row down, I added transparent
white to each color. On the fourth row
down, I chose yellow ochre to mix with it on some of the charts. The other rows vary depending on what I
wanted to see. (You can enlarge the photo above by clicking on it).
I took a color mixing class in acrylic paints a few years
back. The charts we made there were more about color mixing. These were done on
acrylic paper. (photo below)
Top left chart shows primary colors, red on left in box 1,
yellow in middle box 3, blue on right in box 5.
Other charts are variations on color mixing. Most of them show the first row had one color
on the left (box #1) and the one we wanted to mix it with in box #5 on the
right. Then we mixed the two colors together 50/50 and put that mix in box #3.
Again mixed box #3 with #1 into #2; then #5 (original color) and mix #3 into
#4. The second row down were the top row
mixes mixed with titanium white. The third row down contained the first row’s
mixes mixed with neutral gray; and the fourth row down contained the top row’s
mixes mixed with black. These can be
done with any medium, not just acrylic paints. I added some other mixes in box
#6 to see what they looked like.
Basically, most of us know that when we mix blue and yellow,
we get green. But with pigments there are many yellows and many blues, so we
will get many shades of green. Making
color charts will help with decision making when you are painting.
On my own, I decided to try to figure out what my paint
tubes looked like, which ones were transparent and which ones were opaque. I made another series of charts (below).
In these my first column contained my artist grade paints.
The second column contained my student grade paints and the last column
contained some craft paints I also had from other projects. It was interesting to see the differences in
the different grades of paint. The black line down was to help me determine which paints were opaque (full coverage) and which ones were transparent.
These are tedious exercises, but worthwhile and you will
have your own color charts with your paints to refer to for every painting. If you are really serious, you can note down
your mix ratios too (as can be seen in books about color theory).
Happy painting!
Next Friends of Art Manchester regular meeting is on
Thursday, March 19
th at 7:00 p.m. We will be meeting at a different
venue this week. For more information contact blogger and treasurer
LindaFeinberg.
