#3 - Get to know your colors

Exercise #3 - Color - more to come about color mixing, but first get to know your colors

This exercise I did in a class I took with Caroline Jasper quite a few years ago. 

She has written several books on color, Painters' Guide and Color Manual and Power Color, posted on my pinterest board about color theory. 

The purpose was to get to know your colors:

(arranged according to value rather than color wheel) - more about that later



Materials: 


6 tubes of paint in the following colors:  (These are the ones I use for the limited palette).  There are several more exercises using these colors. 

SPLIT PRIMARY PALETTE:

cad yellow light
cad yellow medium

cad red light
alizarin red

cerulean blue
ultramarine blue

On the first day of the workshop we did swatches of each of our colors from the limited palette. 

 1. Cut out 6 pieces of canvas paper 2 inches by 4 inches.

2.  Paint half with full strength paint, then use some odorless mineral spirits to thin the paint on the edges of the block of color. 

3.  Write information about each color on the back, e.g., name, opacity, transparency, etc, info that you get from the label on the paint tube. 

Caroline then asked us to arrange the colors according to value.  (pictured here).  We then took a photo in black and white to see if our values were correct.