Green color chart

I've been real tired the last day or two and didn't get to do as much as I had hoped. I didn't paint yesterday at all but tonight I did manage to get my "green" chart finished, rather sloppily I must say:


I just could not stay in the lines for my life tonight. I'd be doing great and my hand would just twitch and bam, out of the lines. It was interesting to see how the little bit of green added to the Ultramarine Blue brought on a nice turquoise color but as more white was added it seemed to loose that and become more of just a blue. I'm guessing it's because white is a cooling color.

**James

Orange and Cadmium Yellow Light chart.

I managed to get 2 charts finished tonight. Little by little I'm getting more comfortable handling the oils and keeping my brush clean. I'm moving across my colors from left to right, since I did Alizarin Crimson for my last chart I started with my orange mix:


I got a little sloppy and didn't stay in the edges of the box but I keep telling myself that it's the mixing and color that's important, not the edges. Because of my tendency to get frustrated with the learning process I don't want to put too much stress on the less important parts but on the critical point of the charts.

I'm also not sure I'm adding enough of the extra color into each of the regular colors. I've tried to find a good description of the process on the Internet but I haven't seen one with much detail. Right now my question is "how much" of the additional color should be added to the standard colors?

For instance, on my Alizarin Crimson chart. If I added a large amount of it to my Cadmium Yellow Light it would basically become my Orange. Granted, on that chart my Orange would be a half-way point between Orange and Alizarin Crimson. So far I've only added a tiny amount of the extra color to just slightly adjust it's hue and value, do I need more?

I guess I'll continue with this process until I find out otherwise. I'm still learning and getting value out of it and I can also do it again if I want.

My second chart of today was for my Cadmium Yellow Light mixtures. I really like this color, it's so bright and clean but the problem is trying to get 5 different values of a color and is very light to begin with. I don't think I did as great but once again, it produced some very nice colors:


I especially loved some of the greens and blues it made. It's hard to see in the photograph but there is a very nice tint of green to some of the blues.

I'm not past the 1/2 way point with my color charts, I'm hoping to finish these in the next day or two and then I'll start on some simple and small still lifes to have fun and actually create something.

**James.

Alizarin Crimson Chart.

It looks like I was right in thinking I was wrong. LOL

When doing the other charts you don't mix one of your colors into each box of the other colors, only into the top box. Every box that descends from that top box is a value lighter than the one above it. For example, when doing green I mix up my mix of Cadmium Yellow Light and Ultramarine Blue to get the secondary color of "green". When I'm doing my color chart for Alizarin Crimson I add just a touch of that to my base color of "green".

This grays and dulls the color a bit since red is the complementary color of green. Now I just add a little white into this base color to get a lighter value of it. Repeat adding white to get the other values of the base color of my green with a touch of Alizarin Crimson.

The Alizarin Crimson chart is what I just finished tonight:


Aside from putting the blue and green colors in the wrong columns I'm very happy with my results. I'm also very interested in some of the very beautiful values of colors and how the small quantity of Alizarin Crimson affected the base color. It's most notable in the values of green I think.

I also found an even better way of making the charts. I used the template I created on the blank canvas paper and then just used a pencil to draw the squares out. I did this while watching a very interesting documentary of Vincent Van Gogh and managed to draw out about 12 sheets in about 15 minutes. Now it's even easier to get started on the charts since I don't have to fuss around with painting 'through' the template.

I also setup a small display box to start doing little study pieces in still life:

It's nothing but a small cardboard box with part of the side cut out and then some packing tape on the edges to keep it a little more solid. I then went out and god a book of multi-colored construction paper from the drug store to be able to have different colored surfaces.

I'm thinking of painting a nice red tomato so I though this color scheme would be nice for it. Hopefully I get to paint it before I eat it.

I'm slowly getting better with controlling the amount of paint I use but I'm still wasting too much of it. Since I'm only painting these small squares and then adding white to each base color for value I have to remind myself that I don't need much color, white will be adding most of the paint volume, the colors will just be tinting that mass of white.

**James

Trouble with chart #2.

I've found it's taking way to long to try to create the charts I need for each of the color variations and mixes I need to do. After trying to come up with another solution I got an idea from a co-worker to create a template.

I laid out tape on top of a paper canvas sheet Like I had before but instead of painting in the empty squares I used an x-acto knife to cut out the holes. Now I just tape that to another sheet of paper canvas and then tape it to a canvas panel for support. It worked pretty good, it's not as neat as the other method but the preparation time is only a minute or two.

Unfortunately I was about 1/2 way through my second chart when I realized that I don't think I understood the mixing I should be doing:

I layed out my six colors on the top row before but I started out adding a mixture of my first color, Alizarin Crimson, into each color. Since the first column is Alizarin Crimson mixed into itself I just added white into the mix just like last time.

As I went on I soon realized that this is turning out way too dark, I think I need to be mixing white into each successive box. I'll have to look that up again to see what I need to do. Since I had already got about 20% of the way through the chart I decided just to go through with it. I can't save the paper and it's still good mixing experience.

I'm still ending up with way too much paint left over since I'm not very comfortable with mixing yet so I decided to paint a little sphere out of my mind. I went with the colors I had left over but I'm rather happy with it. It was actually fun to play around with a image in my mind, not just a chart:

The main things I tried to work on was to produce the three dimensional feel to the sphere. Not only the shading but also with the reflected light from the table surface coming back onto the sphere in the lower left corner. I think it's a little too strong looking at it now but not bad.

I also tried to add a slight pink/red color to the cast shadow to represent the light bouncing off the ball and affecting the color of the shadow but I don't think it worked out too well. I really enjoyed doing this tiny piece, it's only about 5"X8" in size and only took about 20 minutes. I may start on painting small everyday items such as paint tubes, car keys, or coffee cups.

**James.

My new pochade.

I forgot to post this earlier. I didn't want a big french easel setup to paint since I'm keeping most things below 9X12 at this time. I also am a huge fan of Plein Air painting so I got a nice little GUERILLA PAINTER CIGAR BOX that holds 8X10 inch canvas panels.


It's a nice little box and for $50 I'm very happy with it. Keeping the canvas farther away from my body also helps to keep me from getting too close when I paint. I need to keep back and not get right in front of it as I like to do when I draw.

**James.

Starting to create color charts.

I'm just getting started but I did finish my first color chart today:


It's the colors I mentioned in my previous posting with the secondary colors listed between them:

As listed from left to right on the top row:
1st column - Alizarin Crimson (primary)
2nd column - Alizarin Crimson + Cadmium Yellow Light (secondary)
3rd column - Cadmium Yellow Light (primary)
4th column - Cadmium Yellow Light + Ultramarine Blue (secondary)
5th column - Ultramarine Blue (primary)
6th column - Ultramarine Blue + Alizarin Crimson (secondary)

Each box below the top color is an increased mixture of white into the base color in the top box to reproduce 5 shades of each color.

Even though the results aren't perfect I did learn a good deal from this first chart. The biggest one is after doing the 3 primary colors I went to paint the 2nd column (orange) but I didn't clean my brush enough and there was a small amount of blue in the brush.... Ugh, blue and orange are opposite of each other on the color wheel:


Mixing colors from opposite sides of the color wheel will deaden the color and bring it closer to a gray. I only had a very little blue mixed in so it was very slight shift but as you can see the orange is leaning towards brown a bit.

I also found I need to work harder on making sure I get the correct color before laying it down on the canvas. For instance the first square below the Ultramarine Blue doesn't have enough white mixed in it. It's still too pure.

I'm happy enough with what I'm learning. I'm hoping to start on the next color chart soon. I'm going to lay out the top 6 boxes with the same primary and secondary colors but then start mixing in other colors into each chart. For instance, the next chart will be mixing the first color, Alizarin Crimson, into each color. Then another chart adding orange into each color. so on...

**James

I'm not dead yet!!!

Wow, almost an entire year without any update.... I made this one in with just 4 days left in the year time from my last post.

As one may have guessed, I broke down to the fear I had of being able to paint and really haven't done anything since my last posting a year ago. I'm working hard to get over my fear and just work on painting. To make my start back into painting easier I've decided to create some color charts use the palate I plan on using.

I've decided to use the basic pallet that Kevin Mcpherson uses:

Alizarin Crimson
Ultramarine Blue
Cadmium Yellow Light
Titanium White

I've just purchased new 37 ml tubes of color and went with a large 150 ml tube of Titanium Zinc White, all from Gamblin. I'm not just doing this because I really enjoy his style of painting, though I do, I'm also very attracted to the idea of starting with a very limited pallet and seeing how many colors I can create.

I'm also very unsure of myself with even the basics of handling the pain, mixing, and keeping the colors clean. I'm hoping that creating a few hundred color swatches on 20 or 30 pages of paper will get me over any color mixing problems I have.

I'm hoping to keep this updated on a regular basis and just start paining. Exercises are important but I've painted so little in my life I really need to have some fun so I don't get discouraged again.

**James.