Monday 9 September 2013

Color card in watercolours


A few years ago, one summers afternoon I had an idea to do a colour card
Sorry it's a little chewed around the edges, but it goes out in all weathers on location.

You may wonder why it occupanys me on painting jaunts
Well it's ideal for figuring out what shades to use.
I have a band vertically of the colours I often used and then above the colours are wrote in pencil
Each colour is mixed with every shade.
Mainly primaries with just one green at the bottom.
It's good for figuring out Opaque, Transparent, semi transparent these are also wrote in pencil down the chewed off edge!!
By mixing just two shades of primaries helps to keep the colours from turning to mud!
And we all want beautiful colours in our paintings.

Why not sit down one afternoon, it doesn't need to be Summer, you will need plenty of clean water and you will be surprised at the mixing shades you will obtain.

My palette when I did this was
Transparent Yellow
Indian Yellow
Naples Yellow
Raw Sienna
Permanent rose
Quinacrindone red
Cad Red
Ultramarine 
Winsor blue
Turquoise
Indigo
Burnt Sienna
Raw Umber
Phlalo Green

If you fancy learning a few more watercolour tips 
and ideas I do an online watercolour course with lots of personal feedback
or just send me an email for more info
lakelandart@hotmail.co.uk

4 comments:

juliefordoliver.blogspot.com said...

A good reminder, Jane, thanks. I have done it with my oils but didn't think to do it with watercolors. DUH!

Gloria Tolson said...

Thanks Jane for your quick response to my colour problem I will make myself one immediately.

Lakeland art said...

Thanks Julie and Gloria it really helped me with colour mixing x

Gloria Tolson said...

Many thanks for this Jane, what an excellent exercise in colour mixing, it was a long tedious job that took me 2 sessions to do but I was amazed with all the different shades I achieved.