Color Mixing

# 4

Mixing Secondary Colors taking advantage of color bias-  these exercises are  from the class I took with  artist Caroline Jasper who has written several books on color.  (listed in previous blog and shown on my pinterest board about color theory)


Materials needed:

Canvas paper

Paints:

cad yellow light (or lemon yellow)  COOL because it has some green in it
cad yellow medium  - WARM because it leans toward orange

cad red light  WARM because it leans to orange
alizarin  COOL  because it leans to blue

cerulean blue -   COOL because it leans to green
ultramarine blue   WARM  because it leans towards red

1.  The limited palette called the "split primary", a warm and cool of each of the primary colors.  I like using this palette because the color biases help you in creating the brightest colors when you need them.

 
Mixing the warm and cool of each primary creates what we know as primary red, yellow and blue.

The following exercises take advantage of the bias of the primary colors.   The chart shows the mixes of warm yellow (cad yellow med) and cool yellow (cad yellow light or lemon yellow)  mixed with the warm red (cad red light)  and cool red (alizarin)


Mixing the warm red and warm yellow makes the brightest orange .  Notice when you use the cool red that has blue in it and the yellow that has green it, you get the dullest orange. 

These charts also take advantage of color bias for the best green.  The bluish red (alizarin) mixed with the reddish blue (ultramarine) makes the best purple. 

 

 

 

 

Recent painting using the limited palette.  Lots of warms and cools used here.