"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home" (Twyla Tharp)

Watercolour Painting and Colour Charts ...




 Prior to the SBA Distance Course I have only worked with a limited watercolour palette of six colours .... Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Lemon, Cerulean Blue, French Ultramarine, Cadmium Red and Permanent Rose.
























 The first watercolour painting I ever did was to complete a set of colour charts using only these six pigments - and blending them to produce colour variations.  You can see the colours on each side of the page before gradually mixing them to provide different hues.
I also diluted these blends which shows in the small boxes underneath indicating when more water was added and the resulting paler shades.





   I ended up with over 400 versions of these colours from only six - it  taught me a lot about colour mixing and the water to pigment ratios.


Working on the third assignment for the SBA Distance Course - a page of leaves - meant I had to learn more about colour - specifically greens.  With  advice and suggestions from the Botanical Artists Forum I bought a few more tubes to add to my collection of paints. I started mixing the colours again to see how many greens I would have available and how the colours interacted with each other.   I found it so helpful  to become familiar with the colours and these charts are now a constant source of reference.



Playing with mixing greens ...

4 comments:

  1. Love this post Vicki. Great work!

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  2. A invaluable exercise Vicki - I'm looking forward to seeing some of your leaf studies.

    Best of luck with the assignment.

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  3. I do love seeing Colour chart. I raely do this, usually just mix my colours on a saucer and see what I get often by accident. I know I will enjoy watching how it should be done as I follow your journey.

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  4. Thanks Manon, Hedera and Milly - I think it was so much better with six colours eek now I have too much choice...

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