Hello, welcome back to my studio. Today,
I'm going to talk about color mixing and a specific little tip
to help you figure out what is color harmony in your painting.
A lot of artists stress over getting color harmony. The way I look at color harmony
in your painting is the overall sense of color in the painting.
You know exactly what it means when you're
outdoors and you look at a sunset or sunrise or midday.
You know instinctively what the situation
of the light is. When it's sunrise there's that orange glow.
You understand the color is a certain quality
and that quality of the color happens very easily when nature is taking
care of it, because all of that sunlight is everywhere. It filters
in, it's reflected in, its direct.
It touches and influences everything.
So achieving that harmony is pretty easy.
But when we have to do it with our paints,
a few poor little paint colors and a few brushes, then it becomes difficult.
Now tip Number One is understand the light that you're looking
at. And more importantly, take that understanding of the light
and move it on to your painting. You don't want to look at a tree and say
alright it must be all green leaves.
The go to your painting, put in green leaves.
But it's sunset and that green is now an orangey color.
Rich reds and orange colors and those purples violets.
So the way forward is understand what's happening in nature.
Ask yourself what's the light doing?
And then try and take that idea and put it into your paints.
Now, let's take that example of Sunset / Sunrise.
We know there's oranges and reds
in the sky and it's very warm. Directional light coming onto the landscape, perhaps.
And we think of oranges.
We think of reds.
Now, mix those colors into all the other colors.
Some more, some less.
A green leaf becomes an orangey green because there's orange mixed in.
OK, let's have a look at a few examples of paintings where there's a specific
color harmony. This one not too difficult to figure out.
The color harmony in here is pretty much a warm overall color.
So the warmth of the morning light has infused everything.
Even the shadows are a warmer violet than a cold blue, for instance, in midday.
So everything is infused with that warm light and closer up.
It's more saturated, further away,
desaturated with white and even perhaps some very little bit of blue.
But that doesn't change the overall harmony. Now in this example.
And overall cool harmony. Harmonies of blues, greens.
Even the reddish colors on the rocks are accentuating those cools because
that bit of subdued warmth makes the colors look even cooler.
So blue in some form. Cerulean blue and ultramarine
and even pthalo green being a very cool green in the blue sort of range
is brought into all of the colors that's in the rocks.
It's mixed in and creates an overall harmony.
OK, now in this example.
This is more of a strong overhead light. 10:00, 11:00 a.m. in the morning.
The light is not as warm anymore.
It's not cold, but it's more clean and intense.
And you're getting a sort of cleaner,
very illuminated color.
So therefore, I'm not going to be using
a lot of deep yellows and orange or alizarin crimson, but more
stronger clean daylight colors like lemon yellow.
There's burnt sienna and pretty much clean as it is.
There's more blue, more blue in the shadows as well.
Know you get situations where you've
got maybe a scene where there's lots of water involved.
But the light
might be warm.
How does that influence things?
And this is pretty much the sort of painting here where
there are oranges in the greens. Sort of warm colors. Alizarin in the
violets of the warmish violets.
These yellows and oranges amongst the Yachts. Yellows in the highlights.
Oranges. And there is orange coming into the water as well, making quite a nice
greenish turquoise, but leaning to that orange.
So I've brought orange in a lot of places to increase the warmth, even though
this is basically a seascape and there's a lot of blue involved.
So I encourage you to have a look at a lot of master artists.
Artists that had that impressionist touch. And we're looking at what the atmosphere
did, what the light did, how the light infused colour and created the harmony.
The other tip is use as few to colours as you can. Rather use
the primary colours and a few extra colours.
A palette that I have grown to use in almost every situation I have.
And that is the cool red and a warm red
like red light for warm. Alizarin crimson for cool.
The cool blue and a warm blue like
cerulean is cool, ultramarine is warmer. And yellows
like yellow lemon for cool. Cadmium yellow for warm. Obviously white.
Now those colours can be used to create anything you want.
And if it's going to be warm, you'll mix up orange with your cadmium
yellow and your red light or your Alizarin crimson for a deeper, richer orange.
You'll bring those harmonies in to your other colours as well.
And that is how you create a painting
that is consistent with the light that you see.
And your painting will have that light as well.
And there you have it, harmony in your colour.
If you use too many premixed colours. Tube colours.
You're going to find that the green you using out the tube
throws out everything. Exotic blues, premixed blues, same sort of thing.
And until you really are comfortable
with colour mixing, it's probably not necessary.
And then again, when you are
experienced with colour mixing with a smaller palette, well,
you're not going to want all those extra colours as well.
They're just going to throw out a harmony and create a jarring colour note.
OK, well, that's enough about colour harmony.
I hope it's given you some insight and perhaps something to think about when
you mix your colours and you're looking at a scene.
Alright, until next time, keep practicing your color mixing and cheers for now.