Colour--is what it is all about

Today I thought I would write a post about colour and its significance to the painting process. Most people learn about the primary colours; red, yellow and blue and how to mix these to get secondary colours of green, orange and purple. Some even go on to learn how to mix their tertiary colours from the primaries and secondary colours. The three qualities of colour are Hue, Value, and Intensity. The Hue is the pure pigment or basic colour such as yellow, or red. The value is how light or dark a colour is. The intensity is how bright or dull it is compared to its pure quality. Light changes the quality of colours. Without light, there is no colour. As a painter you will learn how to mix colours to get the colour you want. I believe mixing colour for painting is one of the most difficult aspects to painting. It takes time and effort. Many times you will have difficulties in trying to figure out how to make a colour. People who do not understand the skill involved in painting have no idea how difficult it is to build up those painting skills in order to get good enough to sell your work. Learning about colour and how to manipulate the colours when you are painting is a huge endeavor. Many artist try to use a limited palette. That means they just use a few basic colours and paint with. Limiting your palette will help to create a more harmonious painting. This means the same colours are throughout your painting, not just in one area. When you are mixing colours and want to lighten a colour, don't always use white, try to use a lighter colour instead such as yellow. This will give your painting more colour and not the dull look that white can give at times. Some colours just do not go together and you may end up with "mud." Another thing about painting is you need to limit your use of some colours such as phalo blue as this colour is a very strong paint colour and can easily overwhelm your painting. Other colours to use sparingly are some of the greens as they can be too strong. It is a good idea to try to learn how to mix your greens yourself. The green colours in nature are not as intense and are "grayed" down quiet abit. Also, the use of black is something many artist do not use. Instead they mix up a very dark purple colour and this adds a colour to your dark area. As I mentioned earlier in the post mixing colour is one of the most difficult jobs to painting and it will take lots of paint (you may waste lots too trying to mix) and lots of effort to learn how to get the colour you want. Don't give up! You will learn if you keep on making an effort. Eventually, you won't worry about it so much as you will automatically know how to make each colour you want. But getting to that point will take some time. Good luck and happy mixing!

Ideas for Paintings

Tonight I wanted to post about painting ideas. At various times I will have an idea come to me about a painting that I think may be a good one and I like it and want to paint it and I have learned I have to write that "bit of inspiration" down or I will forget. It has to be something that I can get excited about and think "that would be a great painting!" Many times I have had an idea come to me and I didn't write it down at the time and it was lost to me.

Another thing I have learned to do over the years is to keep pictures of things I have got over the years as a reference for my painting. I have a photo box that is specifically for keeping reference photos for helping me on visualizing something I need to paint. For example, I may need to paint an animal and it is helpful to me to have a photo of that animal to see how the physical structure is made up of the specific animal.

I keep a running list of "painting projects" that I want to do eventually. As I do each project I will cross that one off the list but I am constantly adding to the list so will always have a project that I want to work on. I may work on several projects at the same time.

My advice on this topic is to write down your bit of inspiration for a cool painting project right away so you don't forget what you wanted to do. That way you will have it for when you eventually do the actual painting. It works!