Watercolor Properties - All About Watercolor Pigments, Colour Mixing and Setting Up Your Own Palette

1. Welcome to the Class!: [MUSIC] Knowing the characteristics and properties of watercolor pigments, will help us in the long run, to create the perfect compositions and meaningful color mixes, as well as enable us to use those properties to our advantage in a painting. Hello, everyone. I'm Geethu, an Aerospace Engineer or Watercolor Artist and an Art Instructor originally from India, but based out of the UK. Watercolor is my most favorite medium to paint with and it is almost like an addiction for me. Welcome to this Skillshare class on watercolor pigment properties and color mixing. Learning about these properties of watercolor pigments, and how you can use that knowledge for color mixing can help you you your own painting style and finding that unique set of colors that go into your everyday palette. We will go through the basics of color mixing, creating the color wheel, understanding color temperature, and learn how to create saturated and neutral colors using the split primary color wheel. I will also give you suggestions as to how you can create your own color palette, as well as give you insight into how you can gather more information on watercolor pigments. At the end of this class, we will try to paint a simple landscape using just the foundry colors to help you understand the concepts of color mixing introduced in this class totally. Without any further ado, let's jump into the class. 2. Class Overview: [MUSIC] When we're painting with watercolors, there are various factors involved which makes the painting process easier, as well as make your paintings look more real and natural. These include using the right materials, the techniques, a good understanding of the watercolor properties, as well as having a color harmony in the picture. Among these, one of the most important ones are about watercolor pigment properties, and hence this class is especially about that. But I know that learning about colors and pigments, especially while listening to an online class, can be quite boring and cumbersome. Hence I've tried to make this class as short and interesting as possible to help you understand the concepts introducing this class. I had covered a lot of color theory basics in my elements of cityscapes class, but this class will cover color theory and properties of watercolor pigments more extensively. If you have already taken the elements of cityscapes class, then you'll be able to brush up your knowledge on the same, and add on to your existing understanding of color theory. If you are new here and haven't joined my other class yet, then you'll find this information on colors and pigments valuable and helpful to deepen your understanding of the medium. I recommend maintaining a sketchbook or notebook to note down every ounce of information that you see valuable. I have several books that I have kept for specific purposes like these. I have a watercolor sketchbook to jot down my color theory and pigment studies, as well as a swatch journal or a recipe book for my color mixes. If you already have a sketchbook set aside for your learnings and notes, you can use that. If you've taken the elements of cityscapes class then you definitely have one. If not, this is the best time to have a sketchbook or notebook ready for this purpose. I recommend using a watercolor sketchbook rather than a simple notebook, as you would be able to add some color strokes on your sketchbook and it wouldn't buckle or tear off the pages. We start the class by looking at the basic properties of watercolor pigments and about how and where to find this information. I will also share with you how I choose my colors and how I buy them. Then we'll have a look at the color theory basics by going through the color wheel and understanding basic terms such as hue, value, saturation, and temperature. We will try to understand warm and cool colors, color harmony in a painting, and the temperature bias of most colors that we know. We will also look at some of the colors and pigments that artists have chosen in their palette and try to understand why those specific colors have been chosen. Lastly, we will try to understand about black watercolor pigment before moving on to the class project. 3. Watercolour Pigments: [MUSIC] Let us understand what is watercolor first. Watercolor paint basically consists of the pigment and the binder. Pigment is usually in the powder form and they can be organic or inorganic pigments. In the olden days when synthetic compounds were still being discovered, organic pigments were very common. For example, indigo used to be extracted from plants. Indian yellow from the urine of cows that fed only on mangoes and carmine from dried insects. After the discovery of synthetic compounds, most of these organic pigments have been replaced with synthetic alternatives. Inorganic pigments are those that are derived from metals or rocks found on our planet Earth, and are directly mined from them. They could also be the pigments manufactured in a lab using various methods. The Earth pigments include the ochres, siennas, and ambers while those manufactured in a lab are the cadmium and cobalt pigments. The first component in watercolor is the pigment that has a lot of properties which we will be looking at in the coming lessons of this class. The other component which binds these pigments together and gives watercolor the creamy and cube like structure that we know of is the binder. This is the median that makes the pigments stick together and behave like watercolor. This is exactly what distinguishes watercolors from the other mediums. For watercolor, the binding medium is usually gum arabic, which is the sap produced from acacia trees whilst some manufacturers might also use natural honey. Also watercolor paints available in tubes and cakes is completely different from liquid watercolors. Liquid watercolors are made from dyes rather than pigments and do not possess these unique properties of watercolors. Hence, personally, I do not prefer to paint with the same rather than occasional fun experiments for my Instagram reads. Manufacturers might also use other components to keep the fluidity and the plasticity of the watercolors intact. To increase the plasticity or decrease the viscosity of the paints, usually a plasticizer such as glycerin is added. To increase the humidity or moisture in the paint, a humectant such as honey is added. If honey is used as a binding medium, then probably manufacturers will need to use an additional humectant. These are additional information that is good to know and deepens your understanding of watercolors. If you are ever thinking of making your own watercolors from pigments, then this information to start with. Paint making is in itself indeed a very satisfying process but let's not get into too much of that. Watercolor pigments are defined using a specific number known as the Color Index Name. Each pigment has a unique number to distinguish from each other and knowing this pigment number can give you a lot of information about the paint that you're using. This index name is an international standard name that is used by all manufacturers. The name on a watercolor tube simply means nothing when it comes to understanding about the colors. It is simply a fancy generic name that the manufacturers have used to make their color or otherwise known as the marketing name. Even if manufacturers have used a same pigment and the binder, the marketing name or the generic name used might be completely different. For example, Indian yellow from White Nights, yellow lake from Sennelier, and transparent yellow from Schmincke and Winsor & Newton are all the same. It has the same pigment PY150 in each of them. We can see on the label here it says PY150. The same for the Indian Lake of Sennelier and the transparent yellow of Schmincke. The same way having the same generic name doesn't imply that they are exactly the same. For example, this is Indian yellow from White Nights and this is Indian yellow from Sennelier. As we already discussed, the Indian yellow from White Nights is PY150. But if you look at the pigment composition of the Sennelier tube, it says PY154 and PY153. This means that the same name doesn't imply that the color is exactly the same. But in mostly manufacturers tend to use the common name for the pigments. Now let us understand what are these pigment numbers. The index name starts with the P for pigment, followed by the color category. The color categories are Y for yellow, R for red, O for orange, B for blue, V for violet, G for green, BR for brown, BK for black, and W for white. These pigment numbers will tell you the exact pigment that has been used to manufacture a specific color. As I was saying, manufacturers typically use the common name for these pigments but do not be deceived by the same. Always check the pigment numbers. For example, traditionally, cobalt blues are PB28 pigment and ultramarine blue is PB29. Here's cobalt blue from Schmincke, it's PB28 and this is French ultramarine PB29. Schmincke has used the correct names for the pigments that they have used but this is not always the case. You will also notice that some pigments have a colon at the end of the pigment number, followed by another number. For example, phthalo blue PB15 is available as PB15:3, and PB15:6. These are simply different pigments originally, but quite similar to the original PB15 hence named in this manner. PB15:3 is Taylor blue, green shade, and PB15:6 is Taylor blue, red shade. We will discuss more on this and the color bias later on. To summarize, the watercolor pigments are depicted with a P, followed by the color category and then a number. This number is the number allocated to it in the International Color Standard. PB29 ultramarine blue simply means that it is the 29th blue color that is defined in that color standard. Knowledge of the pigment numbers used in your color tubes or cakes is going to help you a lot when mixing colors. We will discuss more on that in the coming lessons. 4. Earth Pigments: [MUSIC] Earth Pigments are naturally occurring minerals which are used as pigments. Since they are naturally occurring and sourced from rocks and minerals on our planet Earth, they are referred to as Earth pigments. The primary types of Earth pigments are ochers, sienna, and umber. Yellow ocher is a naturally occurring pigment consisting of silica and clay and is included in most artists palettes. Sienna is another Earth pigment containing iron oxide and manganese oxide. When used in its natural state, it is known as raw sienna or natural sienna. Manufacturers heat this natural pigment and it turns into a more reddish brown color to be known as the burnt sienna pigment. Hence, sometimes when you look at the pigment numbers of raw sienna and burnt sienna, you will probably see the exact same number. It is just that the burnt sienna is the heated version of the raw sienna and hence the same number. Similarly, raw umber is the natural version of the pigment and burnt umber is its heated or the burnt version. Earth pigments are good to have on a watercolor palette to create natural looking at the landscape paintings because of the natural browns in it. 5. Watercolour Pigment Properties: [MUSIC] Now let us understand the properties of watercolor attributed by the pigments used in the same. Knowing these properties will help you in your watercolor compositions and in effectively choosing the colors that you want to select in your palette. It will also help you in understanding why some pigments behave differently than others and why some pigments display unique characteristics. The main properties of watercolors are transparency and obesity, staining and non-sustaining, granulating and non- granulating, fugitive, and non-fugitiveness. Now let us understand each of these properties in detail. 6. Transparency and Opacity: [MUSIC] The first property of watercolor paints are transparency and opacity. If you have taken my previous classes, then you might have heard this a lot from me and you might have also seen how I use this knowledge to my advantage while painting. In general, watercolor is known as a transparent medium, unlike gouache, which are known as opaque watercolors. You can easily lay watercolors on top of each other and apply beautiful effects such as glazing and different textures. However, watercolor pigments have different structure and they are not similar to each other. Some of them are thicker or denser and some are more fine and crisp. This allows them to have different qualities or characteristics. Watercolor paints can be either transparent or semi-transparent, opaque or semi-opaque. Now let us understand what this property actually is. Transparent watercolors are, as its name suggests, transparent. It means that it allows the light to pass through and makes the colors glow on the paper. When you paint with a transparent watercolor paint, you will see that it glows on the paper, mainly because it reflects the underlying white of the paper. For the same reason, you won't be able to use a transparent color on top of a dark color. It would simply allow the dark color to pass through and your transparent color will not be visible at all. Examples of transparent colors are, Indian yellow or transparent yellow, typically PY150, Quinacridrone Rose or PV19, etc. Opaque colors, on the other hand, do not allow all the light to pass through, that is, block the light from underneath making the color to appear on the top. They look thicker on the paper and appears like a cloudy mixture. This means that you can apply an opaque pigment on top of a dark color and it will overpower the dark color underneath and be visible on the top. However, also understand that you will be able to increase the transparency of an opaque color by diluting it with water. Semi-transparent and semi-opaque colors are somewhere in between. But the question of what makes it more transparent rather than opaque is a little bit vague and tough to determine. I guess the more the pigment leans towards it, it is named that way. For example, if a pigment is transparent but not 100 percent transparent, then it is labeled as semi-transparent, and the same way, if a pigment is somewhat opaque but not completely opaque, then it becomes semi-opaque. In conclusion, semi-transparent and semi-opaque are not exactly the same. Now, to find out if your pigment is transparent or opaque, you can follow a simple test. Draw a black line with a permanent marker and then apply the paint stroke on the top. You will see that the colors do not appear on the top, whereas opaque colors do. This is simply because of the fact that the transparent color allowed the black light to pass through, whereas the opaque color didn't. The opaque pigment being denser than the transparent pigment has left deposits on top of the marker line thus blocking the light to pass through. In general, helios, hunt sauce, quinacridone colors are transparent, whereas cadmium pigments and some art colors are opaque. We just have to be cautious when using opaque watercolors in our column mixture because they can lead to muddy mixtures due to the dense particles involved. 7. Staining and Non-Staining: [MUSIC] The next property of watercolor that we're going to discuss is it's staining property. This property refers to how much the paint stains the watercolor paper that you using. Staining watercolors simply penetrate the underlying fibers of the paper and stain it whereas non-staining pigments settle mostly on the top most surface of the paper. Staining pigments can also stain other surfaces such as a white table or your watercolor brushes. So you have to use staining pigments with caution, especially if you're going to use the splattering technique with a staining pigment. I have done that mistake and splattered pale blue all over my white table and it took me a long time and several cleaning agents to make it come off the table. This staining property is really helpful in determining the ability of your paint to be lifted from the watercolor paper. If your pigment is staining, then it is very hard for you to apply the lifting technique and lift the color off from the paper to review the white of the paper underneath. This is simply because as soon as you applied your stroke, the paint has penetrated into the underlying fibers of the paper, rendering it impossible to completely lift off the color from the surface. Non-sustaining pigments, on the other hand, enable the paint to be lifted off and to mostly reveal the white of the paper underneath. The simple test to find out if your pigment is staining or non staining is to perform the lifting test. Simply apply a stroke of paint on your paper and as soon as it stops to dry, try lifting off the paint using a dry brush. Also, try to lift it off with a wet brush after your stroke has completely dried, the amount of paint that you are able to lift off to reveal the whiteness of the paper will tell you about the staining quality of the pigment. Staining property is helpful to build up your layers and delays on top of each other and to paint various subjects such as clouds using the lifting technique or to paint light in certain areas. In general pale pigments are highly staining. Another staining pigment is dioxazine violet. Cobalt colors are usually non staining. Watercolor pigments are rated from a staining property of 1-4, one being non staining and four being highly staining. 8. Granulating and Non-Granulating : [MUSIC] As discussed in transparency and opacity, some pigments may be denser than others, while some have fine particles. Hence, depending on the pigment, these particles in the paint can be heavy and dense or thin and light, and this affects the way they behave on the paper. Granulation refers to the property by which the watercolor paints with heavier particles, separating out in the water, and settling in the little hills and valleys of the paper. This is mostly visible on a paper that has a good texture, such as a cold pressed or rough surfaced paper. The heavier particles separate and create a beautiful texture on the paper also known as sedimentary property because the pigment sediments itself on the troughs of the paper. Hence, watercolor pigments are classified into granulating and non-granulating, depending on whether they separate out and create sediments on the paper or not. One of the most common granulating pigment is the ultramarine blue PB 29. To test for granulation, simply apply a wet wash of the pigment on the paper and observe. You will see whether the particles separate out and settle in sediments on the paper or not. For example, have a look at the granulation of this green apatite genuine from Daniel Smith and the lunar black BB K 11 pigment, also, from Daniel Smith. A lot of artists tend to stay away from granulating watercolors, as they may not prefer the way the paint separates out and it's not flat on the paper. But once you understand which colors are granulating and which are not, I think we can use them to our advantage to paint certain elements that could really have a positive effect with the granulation texture. You will also probably observe that when you mix a granulating color and a non-granulating color, they will in most cases separate out when they dry, and also sometimes separate out on the palette. This is mainly because the heavier pigment is going to create sediments, whereas the non-heavier pigment will spread evenly, thus creating the effect of colors separating out from the mixture. I sometimes use this property to depict some textures. For example, this mountain here has a better textured look with a wash of ultramarine blue for the shadows. This painting for the surface of the moon, the ultramarine blue has separated out from the gray mixture, creating a unique appearance of its own. Daniel Smith watercolors has the most number of granulating pigments which you can create a lot of mixes with. 9. Fugitive and Non-Fugitive: [MUSIC] A fugitive property of watercolors refers to how fast the colors fade over time when exposed to sunlight. It is also called light fastness of a pigment, and the more time it takes the pigment of fate, it is known as extremely lightfast or non-fugitive. When it happens to fade its color quickly, it is referred to as less lightfast pigment or a fugitive pigment. Unfortunately, this is one of the properties that is hard to test out as you would have to wait out months or years to see the color gradually fading, and hence test the fugitiveness of the pigment. The American Society of Testing and Materials, or ASTM standards for fugitiveness of a pigment, ranges from a scale of 1-4, with one being the most light fast and four being the lessor, that is fugitive. PR83 or Alizarin crimson and PY40 Aureolin, are one of the most fugitive pigments, and easily fade out over time and hence artists who sell paintings usually stay away from these colors as their paintings could fade over time if used. 10. Tinting Strength, Rewetting and Colour Variation : [MUSIC] Now let us look at some of the other properties of watercolors such as tinting strength, re-wetting, and the color variation of the pigments. Tinting strength refers to the strength of the pigment to tint your color mixtures. When you're mixing certain colors, you will observe that some colors despite adding in huge amounts, does not appear in the mix and needs to be added more in the mixture to be creating a change in color. These are colors with a very low tinting strength. On the other hand, some colors tend to tint your mixture to its hue as soon as you add a very little amount of it. These are pigments with a high tinting strength. Next is re-wetting. You will notice that once the watercolors in your palette is completely dry, it takes a while for you to reactivate some of the colors as opposed to others. This is because some pigments can be quickly re-wet while others may take a while. One hack I normally do to quickly activate my paints is to spray some water onto my palette at the beginning so that if there are some pigments that has a longer reactivating time, then the water spray would have done half the job for me while I reach out for that pigment. Next, let us understand the color variation of certain pigments. Maybe you have noticed that some manufacturers have the same pigment number for a number of different colors such as these from Sennelier, they have the same number, PV19 in all of them. This is because PV19 is one such pigment which has a color variation property where it can appear in different forms when used differently. They can vary from a Rose to a violet color. These pigments are known as multi-personality pigments. Other such pigments include PB36 which can vary from a turquoise or teal color to a greenish-blue color, and PBr7 varying from an earthy yellow to a dark cool brown. 11. Understanding Watercolour Labels: [MUSIC] Now, as we have gone through the various properties of watercolor pigments, let us understand where we can find this information on our paints. Unfortunately, there is a catch here, some watercolors will not have this information anywhere on them, especially if it involves watercolors in cakes or pans and pre made palettes like these. Most manufacturers that produce student grade watercolors, do not put this information out on their paints and hence, it might be difficult for you to get this information. This does not mean that your watercolor set is bad, or that you can't use them. You simply won't be able to see these labels on your paints if you don't have a watercolor brand tube that displays this information. However, sometimes you can go to the manufacturer's website and download the pigment information if they have shared the same publicly. Now let us see how to decode the labels on a watercolor tube. One thing to note is that every brand displays these information differently, and there is no international standard or rule applicable for it's definition on the tube. Hence, what appears on the brand of watercolors that I'm using may not be the same as in what you are using. On the tube of paint, the first thing we see is the generic name of the paint, which has explained before is the name given by that specific manufacturer for that pigment. This name will usually be in bold, bigger letters on the tube compared to the other information on it. Now, if you turn your tube into different directions, you will notice a lot of information in rather small letters. This is the information that will probably guide you as to the pigment numbers and the watercolor properties. Somewhere on the tube, you'll find the pigment number starting with the P, followed by the color category. Some colors will be made of a single pigment and some more pigments. Then you can find the transparency information, by means of a square or circle differing between various manufacturers. Usually, an empty square or circle implies a transparent pigment, and a filled square as opaque. Semi transparent is usually a square or circle half filled on the right side, while semi opaque is half filled on the left side. Next, you can find the light fastness rating as one to four using the Roman numerals, and the other as a star ratings such as on this pchmincke tube. Light fastness one refers to extremely light fast, and four refers to a fugitive pigment. With the star rating, five stars implies it has extremely light fast, and one star implies it is a fugitive pigment. Some manufacturers avoid displaying this information as they do not want to display which one of their paints are fugitive and which are not, so you might have to exercise caution, and use these paints if you intend to sell your work. About the staining and granulation property, you might not find it in most watercolor tube brands however if the information is displayed, it will be on a scale of 1-4 for the staining, a Y for granulating, and an N for non granulating. Last is the series rating on certain tube such as the Daniel Smith. This rating specifically refers to the price range of this pigment, series one implies a cheaper pigment, where series five, implies an expensive pigment. This price guide simply refers to the cost of manufacturing the same and hence priced accordingly. 12. Colour Wheel: [MUSIC] Let us start with the ultimate basics, that is the understanding of primary colors. Primary colors are yellow, red, and blue. They are known as primary colors simply because of the fact that you cannot mix and create these colors. These three colors are the foundation of color mixing and you can even create a whole painting with just these three colors. The first and foremost basics of color theory can be understood with the understanding of the color wheel. Every artist at least once in their lifetime, should have seen the color wheel. Essentially, you should be able to visualize the color wheel in your head. Let us now see the construction of a color wheel. Traditionally, a color wheel consists of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Draw two concentric circles and split the same into 12 equal sections. Let us start with the primaries. The primary colors are yellow, red, and blue. Place them on the color wheel separated by three colors sections. Next are the secondary colors. These are the colors that are obtained by mixing two primary colors together. Mix equal parts of the primaries to create the secondary colors. So yellow and blue will form green, yellow and red will make orange, and blue and red will make purple. Place the colors exactly in the middle sections of the respective colors used in the mix. Now, as you can see just with the three colors, we have six colors in total. Now let us make the tertiary colors. Tertiary colors are made by mixing the primary colors with the secondary colors. We will fill each of these sections by mixing the primary and secondary color adjacent to it. Yellow and orange will give a yellow-orange color, red plus orange will give a red-orange color, red plus purple will give red-purple, blue plus purple will give blue-purple, blue and green, a blue-green, yellow and green, a yellow-green sheet. As you can see, with just three primary colors, we have created 12 colors. There are still mixes that we haven't tried yet. For example, what happens when we mix all the three primaries together? This is how you can create grays and browns. You can vary the amount of one primary color that you add to the three color mixture to create a variety of grays and browns. This color wheel is the basics of color theory embedded in your brain. 13. Complimentary and Analogous Colours : [MUSIC] Complementary colors are the colors that are opposite in a color wheel. The main complementary pairs consist of a primary and a secondary color combination. These are yellow and purple, blue and orange, red and green. They are called as complementary colors because they compliment each other and offers the highest contrast. This means that if you use them together in a painting, they create the highest visual contrast and create strong compositions. Analogous colors are the colors that are adjacent to each other in a color wheel. Choosing two or more colors sitting right next to each other creates a common result in your painting due to the usage of analogous colors. For example, yellow, orange, and red together are analogous colors as they sit next to each other in the color wheel. We discussed briefly about greens and browns by mixing all the three primary colors together. It is effectively mixing complementary colors together. Mixing yellow and purple will create a muted brown color because purple, which is a mixture of red and blue, already contains the other two primaries. Similarly, you can create browns from the other two complementary pairs. Mixing red and green creates a dull brown similar to this, as green already contains yellow and blue, which are the other two primaries apart from red. You can create more greens and browns by mixing together the other complementary pairs, such as yellow-orange with blue-purple, red-orange with blue-green, and so on. Additionally, you can also create more greens and browns by mixing the tertiary colors with the primary colors. For example, yellow-orange with blue, or yellow-green with red. Now, you can clearly see the endless possible mixtures that you can create with just these three basic primary colors. 14. Hue, Value and Saturation: [MUSIC] Let us understand what these three terms mean. Let's start with the hue first. It is what describes the color. This means that hue is the term describing the dimension of the color that we see. For example, the yellows, reds, oranges, etc. It corresponds to the position of a color in the color spectrum. If we go into scientific terms, hue is the spectral composition of a color that makes our eyes perceive that color as it is, such as yellow, red, blue, or green. When we say that something has a yellow hue, it simply means that that object has a yellow shade. That is the color that we see with our eyes. What is its importance in watercolor painting? Some manufacturers refer to hue in the common or generic name of their color tube to depict that it is a color that has been obtained using some pigments to achieve that particular hue. It means that it is not the original version of that pigment name. For example, Schmincke has quinacridone gold hue, which is made up of PY150 and PR101. It is called as hue because the original quinacridone gold hue used to be PO49, but this pigment is no longer available. Hence, Schmincke has tried to make an exact match of P049 using these two pigments. Thus the word hue added to its name. All manufacturers do not follow this naming convention. But mostly if you find that the generic name consists of the word hue, it means that it is possibly an alternative of the original pigment composition of that color name. Now, let us understand value. Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. In watercolors, you can dilute a color by adding more and more water until it eventually becomes so light that it almost looks like white. When we refer to watercolor pigments, dark values with black are called shade, light values added with white is called as tint and when added with gray, it is called as tone. Here, I've used Payne's gray. Payne's gray in its darkest form is like black. Then if I keep adding water to it, it lightens up each time. There are different ways to obtain the tonal value scale. You can either add white to your color, but you can just keep on adding water and then swatching it. With white, it is not the perfect scenario. It is the water method that most artists go for because adding white tends to make it lighter and heavier rather than decreasing its value. But there are certain colors, no matter how much you try, you won't be able to get the darkest tone because it is actually lighter. One main example is yellow. This is the Indian yellow that I have used here. This Indian yellow is the darkest value. You cannot get any darker than this. But the more water you add to your yellow, you'll be able to make it lighter and lighter and get your tonal scale. How do you make a color such as a yellow, more darker, or have a more saturated value? It is very simple. All you have to do is add a darker version of this to it. That would be either you can add Alizarin crimson or a color such as burnt sienna. Here I have done exactly this. I added burnt sienna to this Indian yellow and now you can see that that made my yellow darker and darker. Here again, this is the burnt sienna, but this is again, not the darkest color possible. To the burnt sienna, I have added burnt umber and got it further darker. Again, this here is the darkest version of the burnt umber, but it's still not as dark as black. I added Payne's gray to it and got my darkest color, which was black. This is how you can increase the value of a color. Let us move on to saturation of a color. Saturation of a color is intensity of the color. It refers to the brilliance or the richness of the color. If you have edited some pictures in your phone or PC, you would have observed what happens when you increase the saturation. The colors become more intense and bright. Another term for saturation of a color is chroma. For example, cadmium orange is a high saturation color and burnt sienna is a low saturation color, but both colors are of the same hue, which is orange. Similarly, yellow ocher is less saturated than cadmium yellow, but both of these are of yellow hue. When you look at an object such as a red apple in real-time, it doesn't actually look exactly red in its whole. It's got a lot of colors on that specific object itself because of the way light is falling on it and how our eyes see it. That is why you probably have to mute down a color or effectively reduce the saturation of the color. It is absolutely necessary to mute down a color in real life when you're painting, because you cannot actually find an object in a single color saturation when you look with your naked eyes. They will always be varying tones of it in different saturation levels and as I said, it is mainly because of how light falls on that object. How do we mute down a color? The easiest way to mute down a color is to add the complementary color to it. There are two options. You can either add a complimentary color to it or you can add a gray or black tone to it to mute down the color. Most artists prefer to use the complimentary color to mute it down because when you add black to it, it gets darker and darker towards black. Whereas when you add a complimentary color, the saturation level of that color starts coming down and then you see it getting darker and darker. Here I have taken ruby red and I have added sap green to it. Green because it is the complimentary color to red. You can see here from the second column on reds, as I have added green, the color gradually decreases its saturation value until it reaches almost as green. This is how you would mute down a color or decrease the saturation of a color. The same thing can be done with all the other colors. For example, with blue here I have added the complimentary color, which is orange, and I have muted down the color to get into that brown gray scale, eventually leading to orange. I have done the same way with green and ruby red. As you can see, this green and this green is not exactly the same, although I have added the exact same sap green. This is because in this scale, this sap green is still contaminated with the ruby red. That is, this is a desaturated value of the sap green. That is, it's almost somewhere around here. I think this and this matches together because this is the sap green, which is the desaturated with the ruby red. The same way as we have got this saturation scale for the sap green. 15. Colour Temperature: Now let us understand what is scarlet and reject. You must have cut. Artists talk about cool and warm colors. This is the color temperature. It refers to the wall or coolness of a color. Let's have a look at the color wheel again and determine which are the warm and cool colors. In general. On a color wheel. The yellows, oranges, and reds. Warm colors. Blues and greens are the cool colors. So let us see how we can divide the color wheel to depict the warm and the cold side. One thing we need to understand is that the wand and coolness of a color is based upon perception. And each artists might view some colors differently. So you need to look at the color wheel yourself and determine what is it that you feel regarding the warm and coolness of each of the colors? So let me explain this to you. Warm colors are those colors that give a sense of want's to you, like the color of the sun fire exit row. So this makes the yellows, oranges, and reds to be the warm colors. Similarly, give a sense of coolness or cold feeling. It would be the color of the nature of ocean, ice, etc. That makes the greens and blues to be the cool colors. In this color wheel. I'm going to add a line here separating the color wheel into two halves. The left side would be the warm side as all the yellows and reds are there. And the right side would be the cool side as all the blues and greens and there, it is really important to learn about the color temperature because it helps to create the mood and depth in a painting. In general, warm colors tend to advance or come forward in a painting where does cool colors recede or go back in space? It is just an element of illusion to arise. This is mainly because in the light spectrum, the wavelength of warm colors are longer than the beam lengths of cooler colors. So you see the warm colors sooner than the cool colors. This creates an illusion of depth in a painting. Imagine you paint a red apple in a dark green background. This color scheme enhances the painting twofold. One, the use of complimentary colors to give a maximum contrast. Second, the cool green color for the background makes the warm red of the apple to appear forward, giving a sense of depth. That does make the painting look three-dimensional. This is about the colors in the color wheel. But what if I told you that there are warm and cool version for all the colors, this is because color temperature is related. Let us understand how this is. A color might appear warm next to one color, but cool next to another color. Let us take the example of yellows. First, I have lemon yellow or resilient, and Indian yellow here. As you can see, these three colors are entirely different. If you look at the lemon yellow, it is slightly a greenish yellow. And compared to the origin and Indian yellow next to it, doesn't the yellow lemon cooler. And then as you can see, the Indian yellow is more yellowish, that is more leaning towards or bias towards orange or red. And hence it is a warm yellow. So we can clearly see that related to another similar color. Each color can have a warm or cold bias. Hence, lemon yellow and, or alien or cool yellows. And Indian yellow or transparent yellow pea by 150 is a warm yellow. Now about reds, what is a warm or cool red? If a read is biased towards, are leaning towards purple or blue, then it is a cool red. And if it is leaning towards orange or yellow, it is a warm red that cadmium red, carmine and Queen Rose together. As you can see, this carmine and Queen Rose has a hint of purple, which makes it look more like a rose shade. Thus, carmine and Queen Rose are cool red. Cadmium red, on the other hand, looks more warm and bias towards orange or yellow and hence is a warm red. Similarly, you can look at all the reds that you have and determine for yourself whether it is a cool red or a warm red. Now, let us look at blues. It is quite tough to understand the wants of blues. In case of blues, if it leans towards purple or red, it is a warm blue. And if it leans towards green, it is a cool blue. So Taylor blue or bright blue from White Nights and quiz blues, which looks more like a greenish blue, are cool blues. So how does a blue look like? Red? It means that it will be leaning towards purple, or is more darker in color, such as this ultramarine here. Ultramarine blue, hence, is a warm blue. And as you can see that cobalt blue is right here in the middle. So related to the bright blue, cobalt blue would be warmer than the bright blue or the blue. Whereas with respect to ultramarine, cobalt blue would be cooler. To summarize, color temperature is how cool or warm colors. Using this concept, we can make one color warmer or cooler. Let us take Aurelian, e.g. it is a cool yellow, but don't think of it as a cool, warm yellow right now. Just think of it as a yellow. Now we want to make this warmer. So how do you make it warmer? In order to make it warmer, we should add more orange or something that looks like red to it. So that would mean adding an orange hue or red color to your Aurelian in order to make it more towards the warmer side. So that is how you would make a yellow warmer. That is, by adding an orange hue or red hue to it. Now, how do you make it cooler? In order to make it cooler, we add a blue to it. It's as simple as that. Here. I have added cobalt blue to this side. So if you keep on adding more blue, you can see that you've made this yellow into a more cooler color. So this is how you can actually make a color warm or cool. For the case of red, let us place it in the middle box and see how we can make it warmer or cooler. So how can we make the red warm or cool? This is how the knowledge of color wheel comes into play. If you look at this line, the warmer side is here and red is here. In order to make a read more war, we must be adding more orange and yellow to it so that it moves further up towards the warmer side in the color wheel, you can see as we add more yellow to red, it becomes warmer and warmer. Now, how do we make it cooler? So again, to make it cooler, we see that on the cool side it is purples and blues next to the red. So in order to make it cool, We must be adding more purple or blue to it and it will become cooler. See again here, I have added a blue to my red and it's becoming cooler and cooler. So to summarize, in order to make our red warmer, we add more yellow to it, and in order to make it cooler, we add blue to it. Now, let us look at Blue. How would you make it look warmer with the case of blues? As you can see, it's right in the middle of the color wheel, and hence it as both perceptions, you can add more yellow to it or you can add more red to it. So how do we differentiate between what makes it cool or warm? Because red and yellow are both warm colors. Let us see what is happening. When you add more yellow to a blue, it tends towards the gleans, which is in fact goo. But when you add more red to it, it turns towards purple, eventually turning into a red side, making it warmer. So hence, that means that if you add more yellows to your blue, it becomes cooler. And if you add that to your blue, it becomes warmer. As you can see here. The more yellow I have added to my blue, it has made it cooler. And the more red I have added to it, it has made it warmer. Let us consider a secondary color, green as well. So how would you make this warmer or cooler? It is very simple. If you look at the green on the color wheel, to the left of it is the yellows and the right fit or the blues. So which means that if you add more yellows to your green, it would become warmer and warmer eventually making a yellow color. And if you add blue to green, it will become cooler and cooler, eventually becoming a blue color. This is as simple as that. And as you can clearly see, the whole basics lies in the color wheel and the positioning of the warm and cool colors. 16. Split Primary Colour Wheel: [MUSIC] Now that you have seen the color wheel and the color temperature depicting a color as warm or cool, let us understand what a split primary color wheel means. If you look at the color wheel that we have made, you will see that no matter how much you mix in whatever ratios, certain colors do not make vibrant secondary colors. Let us consider the blue and the red mix for example. As you can see, the violet or purple is less vibrant and not at all pleasing to the eyes. This is mainly because the blue and red that we have used does not have the same temperature bias. In general, all the primary colors are biased towards a secondary color. For example, a warm red is biased towards an orange, which is a secondary color, and a cool red towards purple. Similarly, a warm yellow towards orange and a cool yellow towards green, and warm blue towards purple, and a cool blue towards green. Now, imagine if you were to mix a cool blue and a warm red, the cool blue is biased towards green and the warm red biased towards orange. If you are mixing these two together, you are essentially mixing all the three primaries together, because orange contains a little bit of yellow as well as green contains a little bit of yellow. They are not biased towards the same color. Let us just see the mixture. Hence, a warm red and a cool blue will give a muted purple because they are not biased towards the same color. In order to mix a vibrant orange, we need to be using two colors with the same bias. That would be a warm yellow and a warm red, which are both biased towards orange. If you want to mix a very vibrant purple, then you need to mix a cool red, which is of course biased towards purple, and a warm blue, which is also biased towards purple. This is where the split primary color palette comes into picture. It simply means splitting the primary colors into two; it's warm and cool version, and then creating the color wheel from it using the same temperature bias. I'm going to take lemon yellow for my cool yellow and Indian yellow, also known as transparent yellow for my warm yellow. Carmine for my cool red, and ruby for my warm red. Teal blue, also known as bright blue for my cool blue, and ultramarine for my warm blue. Let us see the placement of these colors now. First of all, let us place the two yellow side-by-side on the top. The cool yellow, which is the lemon yellow on the left side, the warm yellow, Indian yellow on the right side. Now for the red, which red is biased with orange like the warm yellow? That would be the warm red, hence, we'll place the warm red, ruby, here and the cool red, which is carmine on the other side. Now, which blue is biased towards the purple like the cool red? That would be the warm blue and, hence, ultramarine blue is placed on that side. As you can see, the only remaining blue, which is the cool blue, will be placed on the other side, and it is automatically biased towards green next to the lemon yellow, which is the cool yellow, also biased towards green. Now let us divide this color wheel into three segments. This here is the split primary color wheel, once you fill in the secondary and tertiary colors. To mix vibrant colors, the only thing you have to remember is to mix primaries that belonged to the corresponding segments. To create a vibrant orange, mix these two primaries together, rather than mixing with a cool yellow. Similarly, a vibrant green can be mixed by mixing these two together and a vibrant purple with these. Let us also place the other mixes outside this color wheel just to see what the colors would be. You can clearly see that the colors formed by mixing primaries outside of its corresponding segment is less vibrant. This split primary color wheel is the basics of color wheel and it's everything that you need to set up your palette. Now you know that with six primary colors, both warm and cool versions of each of the primary colors give you a wide range of colors, both vibrant and faded, and will also give you an endless gray and brown mixtures. 17. Mixing Saturated Colours: [MUSIC] Now that we have seen the split primary color wheel, we now know the basis of mixing saturated and vibrant colors. We just have to stick to mixing the colors in the corresponding segments that this mixing colors with the same bias. Hence, to mix a saturated orange, we would use a warm yellow and a warm red, which are both biased towards orange. Saturated purple with a cool red and a warm blue both bias towards purple, and saturated green with a cool blue and a cool yellow both bias towards green. 18. Mixing Neutral Colours: [MUSIC] Now let us see how we can mix neutral or muted colors. There are two ways to mix neutral colors. One would be to mix the primaries that are further away in the split primary color wheel. That is colors of opposite bias together. All the combinations of mixing the primaries together except for the saturated pairs, would create muted colors. Hence, a muted orange can be mixed by mixing yellows and red, which are further away in the color wheel and do not belong in the same color segment. Hence, a muted orange can be mixed by mixing yellows and red, which are further away in the color wheel and do not belong in the same color segment in the split primary color wheel. For example, lemon yellow and this ruby red, which is a cool yellow and warm red, can make a muted orange. These are called neutralized compound colors because these mixtures contain traces of all three primaries because of the temperature rise. For example, mixing a warm red with a cool blue gives a desaturated, neutralized and less vibrant purple, which effectively consists of all the three primaries because of the orange bias of the warm red and thus contains traces of yellow in it. Effectively we're mixing all three primaries together to get a variety of grays and browns which are neutral colors. The second method of mixing neutralized colors are to mix the complimentary colors together. We discussed earlier that mixing the complementary color of one color decreases the saturation of the color. If we mix the same in equal proportions, it creates a neutralized gray or brown color. Hence, by mixing the complimentary colors in the basic color wheel as well as the split primary color wheel, we can create a range of grays and browns. 19. Creating Your Own Colour Palette: [MUSIC] Creating your own color wheel takes a lot of practice and mixing exercises to determine the best colors that suit your style of work and mixes that you need to create. If you are a beginner, the best place to start is the primary colors. Just with three colors, you can create a wide variety of colors. But an even better palette would be to use the split primaries that gives you an endless number of color mix as possible, hence, pick out the warm and cool versions of each of the primaries. This can be your basic palette. You can build on from that. The best way to get all the mixes possible would be to make your palette with a mix of wide variety of reds, yellows, and blues. Additionally, you can add some Earth pigments such as yellow ocher, raw sienna, and burnt sienna to our palettes because these are naturally occurring pigments which are good to have in the palette. Some artists also prefer to add some greens and other colors to their palette. These are known as convenience colors. They can be mixed easily using the split primary colors, but if you do use a specific green a lot, then it is better to add it to your palette so that you don't have to keep mixing it every time you want to use it. The same goes for colors such as Payne's gray, indigo, neutral tint, or burnt umber. 20. Black Watercolour Pigment : [MUSIC] Most artists don't use black in their palette, but rather use some version of black such as Payne's gray or neutral tint. This is probably because black pigments have a high tinting strength, which means they can overpower other pigments when mixed together. Another possible reason might be that black pigments are usually opaque and hence may not work on layering or the glazing technique. However, it is totally up to a certain artist choice whether they should use black pigment or not. That being said, Lunar Black from Daniel Smith, PBk11 is a wonderful transparent granulating black, which is really great for dark mixtures, useful for depicting texture on cityscape paintings. Lamp Black from White Nights, PBk7, and Ivory Black PBk9 pigments, on the other hand, are not as transparent. One thing I did not discuss by talking about desaturating or muting down a color was about how you can use a black pigment to mute down a color. I didn't purposefully go into that because muting down a color using black is not ideal and can be quite unnatural. The best way to desaturaze a color is using the complimentary colors rather than mixing with black. Unless you're looking for a specific mixture with the black itself, it is always better to stick with the color wheel to create wonderful dark grays, browns, and blacks. 21. Specific Colour Choice by Professional Artists: [MUSIC] You must have seen artists prefer a certain color more in their pallet. This may not be a primary color itself, but rather a different color, most probably a convenient color. For example, some artists prefer to have more browns in their pallet and might resort to using burnt CNS and it mixes with different colors throughout their painting style. Some of us might use darkest green or lavender. It is quite difficult to understand why they have chosen these colors, mainly because they didn't come to that color choice overnight. Years of practice might've brought them to that decision. In general, if you're trying to learn from other artists, give importance to the techniques taught rather than the colors. Then, choose your own colors. In this way, you'll be able to develop your unique style and choice of unique colors just like those artists found out theirs. Let us take lavender for example. Many artists have this in their palette and use it as a mixing color. There could be various reasons for this. Lavender is perfect for shadows on yellow buildings. Also because violet is a complementary color of yellow. Lavender being a mix of violet and white, mutes down the yellow perfectly for city scaping things and at the same time giving warm or cool tones as necessary. I have this in my palette for city scaping things for this specific reason. It's good for using in mixes as well as straight out of the tube. The white pigment in lavender gives the lavender wash some substance that this make the stroke opaque and hence very useful in paintings with the opacity technique. Lavender is also perfect for painting skies, as it gives a natural muted appearance to the sky rather than unrealistic, perfect blues. It can also be used for painting shadows of white areas in a painting. For example, the shadows of the folds and [inaudible] in t-shirts in a human figure painting, or it can be directly used for its color appearance, such as for lavender fields. Another similar color that artists generally use is Amethysts Genuine from Daniel Smith. Its usage is quite similar to the lavender, except for the fact that it offers the same mixing possibilities without the presence of the white pigment. This ensures that the mixes with Amethyst do not unnecessarily become lighter, as is the case with lavender. Horizon blue and shell pink are other such colors used by artists. It all comes down to personal preference. Hence, you need to work at your own techniques and choice of colors. My point of explaining this was to ensure that we do not blindly follow the color choice of another artist when learning from them. We must learn to experiment on our own and decide the best suitable colors ourselves. 22. Guide to Buying the Best Colours: Many of you might own a basic watercolor set like this one, which is composed of some colors [NOISE] as picked by the manufacturer. But as you go through the stage of understanding column mixes and the best colors to make the split primary color wheel, you will realize that it is always better to buy your own colors rather than getting a pre-made watercolor set. There is absolutely nothing wrong in using watercolor palette like this one if that is what you prefer, but choosing your own individual colors has a lot of advantages. One, you will be selecting those colors, hence, you already know the best possible color mixes, or what are the mixes that you're expecting out of it? Second, you'll be able to choose the best pigment that suits your style. Third, you don't have to stick with one brand of watercolors. You can widen your search and pick the best pigments from all of the brands out there. [NOISE] Of course, for me, the pleasure of going through the pigment composition and deciding on each colors. I know that watercolor sets are more cheaper than getting the individual colors, but you will eventually learn that getting your own shades is a lot more helpful in your watercolor journey. To begin with, you can start with White Nights watercolors, which is the cheapest of all professional brands. It is a Russian brand called Nevskaya Palitra White Nights. Some artists say that White Nights are student green watercolors, but personally, I believe they are professional quality and have seen professional artists whose entire palette is with White Nights watercolors. Most of the colors in my palette is from White Nights, especially the Indian yellow PY150 that I use. Now, I will tell you some quick tips to help you select the best colors for your ballot. It is always best to go for single pigment colors. Some manufacturers might make several pigments together to get a specific hue, hence, when you get these and use them in your mixes, you're effectively mixing more than two pigments together, for example, transparent orange pigment is P071. Schmincke has this color in a single pigment form. However, a transparent version of the orange from Sennelier is the red orange color. But this color is a mixture of PO43, and PY83. Thus, you can see that although a similar hue, the composition of these two colors are different. One is a pure orange pigment, while the other is a mixture of an orange pigment, PO43, and a yellow pigment PY83. Hence, always look out for single pigment colors rather than multi-pigment colors. As multi-pigment colors can lead to muddy mixtures, often due to the mixing of more pigments. As I suggested before, having burnt sienna in our basic palette, is good as it is a wonderful earth color to have on a palette. It makes us with blues to create amazing grace. But here again, while buying, you need to look at the pigment composition. Burnt sienna from Mijello is an amazing brown color, perfect for painting roofs of houses or to pair with Indian yellow for sunset paintings. However, you cannot use the same to create a good gray color when mixed with blue. This is biggest pigment composition of this color is PBr25, PR112 and PY150. PY150 is a yellow pigment, and thus it will contribute to a green hue when mixed with blue. Hence, you need to look for a burnt sienna that doesn't have a yellow pigment in it. I'm not saying that this color is not good, no, it is one of the most beautiful colors. Just that it isn't great for mixing gray. The best is PBr7 or PR101. Burnt sienna from Daniel Smith and White Nights is PBr7 and Winsor and Newton is PR101. If you are a person who prefers to paint more natural, and muted looking colors, then include raw sienna in your palette. It can contribute towards a warm yellow in your palette. Another color I often have in my palette is green from White Nights. It is PG8 pigment. I absolutely love it. It's not not a primary color, but it's like a convenient color for me. If I have this green, then I do not need any other greens in my palette. I can easily mix a sap green by mixing PY150 Indian yellow or an olive green by mixing with raw sienna or burnt sienna. You can also choose to have a gray or neutral color in your palate, such as Payne's gray or neutral tint. The darkest tones of such colors are usually similar to black and is perfect substitute for black in your palette. This do not generally use black in their palates. I will tell you the reason soon. Next, I would suggest having some opaque pigments in your palette. Sometimes working with the opacity technique, that is to layer a lighter color over a dark wash might come in handy. Opaque pigments are useful for this purpose as well as to add some color accents to your paintings. These include cadmium yellow PY35 cadmium orange PO20, cadmium red, lavender, Naples yellow, etc. Lastly, with practice, you will have probably come to a standardized color for your backgrounds or have a certain color preference for your paintings. You can add them to your palette as your set of convenience pigments, you must have seen artists use lavender or turquoise color in this way. 23. Learning Resources: [MUSIC] Once you start looking at watercolor pigments and their properties, you probably might get obsessed and go into this unstoppable quest for more information on this ink. Finding this information in books or online is a difficult task, as there are thousands of book options and online blogs out there. I can help you get started. If you're looking for more information on a specific pigment, you can simply enter the pigment number into your search engine such as Google, and you'll be hit with a 1,000 search results. The best one to reach out for would be Hand Print by Bruce MacEvoy or Parka Blogs. Both of these websites covered extensively about each of the pigments and will give you a lot of information on these. Another website I rely on to look at the pigment numbers itself is Jackson's Art, which is actually an online art supply store. However, if you visit the color range of individual brands on the site and click on each color, you will be able to get the pigment numbers and other useful information. Sometimes when I'm buying new colors or think of a color and need to know the pigment information, Jackson's is my go-to site. For example, I might already own a certain pigment such as yellow ocher from Sennelier and can't remember the pigment number, I immediately head to Jackson's Sennelier color range page to check this ink. It is much easier for me and accessible in a few clicks on my phone rather than heading to my studio and finding the tube of paint. Now, all of these sources are where you would have to go and search for this ink. Obviously, unless we're thinking of it or in desperate need to know about it, we wouldn't spend our time in these websites. That is where I have this other option, which keeps me updated and enhances my knowledge on watercolor pigments without me looking for it. It has information on their monthly or weekly newsletters, and they come straight to your inbox. You can give it a read in your free time, and that enhances your knowledge on colors and various pigments. For example, I have subscribed to Winsor and Newton emails and occasionally I get these colors, spotlights, emails which are really great read and offers a lot of information that I otherwise wouldn't have care to find out. Sign up to good blogs and newsletters of good brands that you love so that you will have more information at your fingertips. However, also remember to not clutter your inbox with newsletters and emails from all the brands and blogs out there. It could be overwhelming and you might end up ignoring these emails. Choose some of the best ones and go forward with it. You can always choose to receive or not receive these emails. 24. Materials for Class Project: [MUSIC] Let's have a look at all the art supplies that you will need to paint the class project. Remember, as I always mentioned, you don't need the exact art supplies that I'm using. You can use whatever materials that you have to follow along the class projects. First, we need watercolor paper. As you may already know by now, if you have taken my previous classes, I always recommend using a paper that has a minimum thickness of 300 gsm or 140 lb, and 100 percent cotton. For the class project, I'll be using this watercolor paper from Arches, which is cold-pressed, 100 percent cotton with a weight of 300 gsm. But since the basis of this class is about the colors rather than the techniques, you can follow along and use your own methods, and hence paint on any kind of paper. You can even paint in a sketchbook if that's what suits your style. Next, watercolor brushes, I'll be using the Silver Velvet series size eight brush for the project. Watercolor paints, I'll be using paints from White Nights watercolors, particularly six colors from my split primary color wheel, which are Indian yellow PY150, lemon yellow PY3, ruby red PR170, carmine PR19, ultramarine blue PB29, and bright blue PB15. You don't need the same pigments that I am using. Get the warm and cool versions of the primary colors that you own for making the palette for this project. I will be taping my paper on this paper block itself. Have a masking tape ready if you'd like to have a clean border for your painting. Two jars of water for cleaning and washing off your paints. Lastly, a palette for mixing your colors. 25. Class Project: We're going to bring into the whole landscape just using the primary colors. I'm going to apply water to the whole of my paper first because we're going to work on the wet on wet technique. Applying the water to the whole of my paper, I'm using my large flat brush. This is silver atelier hake brush. This covers a large surface area of my paper, this is the reason why I use it. Make sure that you apply the water. My paper is a 100 percent cotton, 300 GSM cold pressed paper, which means that it will stay wet for a long duration of time. If you're not using a 100 percent cotton paper, make sure that you apply the water multiple times so that you're able to work on the wet on wet technique. Also, I'm going to hold my paper here at an angle like that so that all the water would flow down and it will not form any large pools on the surface of the paper. Now that we have applied the water, let us start painting. We're going to start with ultramarine blue, which is the warm blue that I'm using. I'm going to start with it at the top for my clouds. I'm just going to apply my ultramarine blue on the top in the form of clouds. I think I'll have an angle for my paper. That is best to get the best effects when you're painting with wet on wet. I'm just going to keep my tape underneath and that would give me an angle on my paper. Taking ultramarine blue and adding to my sky for getting some wet on wet clouds in the sky. My darker ultramarine blue would go over to the top. Our paper is wet and as you can see, it's contributing towards these softer clouds in the sky. Taking my dark paint and applying at the top because I want the darker colors to be at the top. As you go lower down, the color can get lighter and lighter. You can see, my color is getting lighter. This is one single color for the sky that we're using now. It's just ultramarine blue. I've painted almost until towards the middle of my paper. Now, let's get to adding the next things. I'm going to have a mountain in the background. It's better to have always this angle so that all your paint will just flow down rather than flowing up. For painting the mountain, I am going to mix a green shade. I'm going to take my warm blue and my warm yellow. As you can see, they're not in the same segment, so they're going to give a muted green. Here's my blue, and here's my yellow. As you can see, I've mixed them together and I don't get a perfect green, it's a very muted green. But I want to mute this further. Muting this further would be to add the complementary color for it. Complementary color to green is red, so I'm going to add my red a little to that. Now, that's muted a lot. You can see how I've desaturated that color. That's blue, yellow, and red together, but not a lot. I'm going to have my mountain here in the background. It's still wet, you can see my paint. I'm using my wet paint and applying. Just keep adding. As I reach towards the bottom, I think I'd like to get a more natural green, so I've mixed a little bit of yellow to that. Let's go with a bit more ultramarine blue and yellow, so that looks more like sap green. That's at the base. You can see, we've mixed that shade together. Let's not go towards this right side for now, I'm just going to stay off of the right side. Also, if at any point you find that your paper is starting to dry, you can go ahead and reapply the water, so long as you're applying only towards the bottom because you don't want to apply the water at the top where your water can go towards the top and ruin your existing strokes. Just at the bottom, you can go ahead and keep watering, which would make sure that your paper stays wet. This is because we're going to paint from from top-down. We've added the beautiful green stroke. That was the background mountain, and as you can see, that's why it's lighter. Now let's get to the foreground. For painting the foreground, I need a more nice, beautiful green. For that, I am going to mix my yellow with the other color. That is going to mix my lemon yellow and my teal blue or my bright blue, and that would give me a beautiful green. You can see the green I'm getting? That's very vibrant and this green, but as you know, I'm trying to paint a landscape that is more natural looking. In reality, there are no such greens involved in nature, so I mute it down using my red and get an olive green color. There, I think that's much better, getting that olive green shade. I've just muted down, that has desaturated my green to get that olive green shade and we would apply that at apply that at the base. As you can see, because this region had started to dry, I am getting my stroke separate line over there. I will also apply it here and towards this region. This is where our path is going to be, and here. We need to keep mixing that color, obviously. The beauty of mixing is that you don't use the same color all the time. Every time you mix, your color is going to vary slightly and you think it's bad, but it's not because it just adds beauty to your paintings that you have such a varying mix on the paper in front of you. I'm taking my green and adding. Now, let's make some dark green. For mixing a darker green, which means we need to add more of our blue to it. That's my yellow. Taking more of my blue, that's the bright blue. Taking more bright blue and adding, so that's a dark green, but again, I'm going to mute it down because in reality, there's no such real colors. Just using my red and desaturating it. Desaturated that into this color. I think I'm going to desaturate it more because I feel it's too much. Now, that's the color I'm looking for. We're going to add small, bushy shapes at the edge there. My paper is still wet. That's why I'm getting these soft strokes [inaudible] side. I'll add a bit more red and try to mute down that color into a brownish tone towards this right side. I think that's that. Let's keep going. We need to be working faster. Now, we need to mix a gray tone as in a color like a raw sienna. That would be more like this, which means I need to mix my yellow and red together, warm yellow and warm red together. Taking my warm yellow and my warm red together. I've created a nice golden orange shade, but I need to desaturate this. The color opposite to orange in the color wheel is obviously blue or purple, which means that I just need to add a bit more blue into my mixture. I will be able to desaturate it and get it into a more grayish tone but I need more yellow and red. That's a nice Grey tone and that is what I'm going to apply towards the edge here for the path. We are applying that. Now I need to get back to the green that we already mixed for this color. That would be yellow and my ultramarine blue or [inaudible] blue, you can mix whichever. You just have to try and tone down the color as deemed fit. Now, we're going to apply that in the center. That's where the path is. Now going back to my color, yellow color. I want to tone this down, so I'm going to pick up my blue and add to it. Taking more yellow and red mixture, creating that brown shade there. Now, I've created a more dark brown shade than the one we used earlier, and this is what we want to apply on the top because we need to make the art more realistic. It's getting there. Now I need to mix a dark brown color. For that, I'm going to mix yellow to its complementary color to get nice brown color. Here's yellow and the complementary color of yellow is violet. I need a very beautiful violet. I'm going to mix the violet that belong to the corresponding segment here. That would be my warm blue with my cool red. Then I get the perfect violet shade and I'm going to mix this with my yellow. That means it had more blue in it. I want to take it a bit more red, and added it. You see I've got a dark brown color, which I want. This dark brown color. I could add a little bit more red to it so that I get the color like burnt sienna. That is what I'm going to add to this edge here and some to these areas here, and you alternate some darker colors for the green. There goes my green. Now I'll take more of my green that I mixed. That would be yellow and the blue together and desaturating it with my red. There I think it needs to be a bit more yellow and blue. That color is perfect. I will now apply it at the end here and on my grassland again. My grassland started to dry. I'm just going to blend it with my brush. It's absolutely fine to go over with your brush again if you can make sure that you don't introduce a lot of water or ruin the strokes. I'm just reapplying my strokes. The same towards this side, it started to dry. I'm just going to go over it with my brush again. Now we've added a green stroke. I think I need to make green some more, desaturating it with the red. This is because like I said, the nature in reality is never these greens. We need to desaturate it. We need colors like olive green and such for landscapes in real. That's what we're trying to do. Now let me go back to that dark tan color that I created. That would be mixture of the yellow, red and my red. My cool red could give me this bond amber color and I will apply that towards the base. Just adding some strokes like that. I think now the background is good to go. I'm just going to wait for this whole thing to dry so that we can add in some foreground elements. Here it's now completely dry, so let's go ahead and start adding some foreground elements. For that, I am going to make that brown burnt [inaudible], so that would be mixing my Indian yellow, which is the warm yellow. The warm yellow, the warm blue. As you can already see, mixing the warm yellow and warm blue creates the desaturated green that we want. Warm yellow and warm blue and then further desaturating it with my red, so that creates brown and that is my cool red, which is my carmine shade. Now we've got a nice burnt umber stroke. I'm going to add a little much more blue to it and that'll make it more darker. Now this darker shade is what I'm going to add, so I am going to add a tree here. Just use any stroke or shape on your brush and add the tree branches. But we need to work quick and let's add in the tree. For adding in the tree, we can make different greens. One is the green using my cool yellow, cool blue, and desaturating it, so you got like a desaturated green color here. Then I'm going to make a olive green using my Indian yellow, and my ultramarine blue. Now let's start, so just going to add this my tree. Just going to place this and create these random strokes, so don't stress on the strokes. As you can see, it's just running my brush along. I'm going to mix some more. That's the magic of mixing because you won't always get the same color each time that you're mixing. It just creates that idea of shades. Also, when you run your brush along like this, it creates these gaps in-between the trees, giving the perfect illusion of the sky through the tree. I'm taking that dark pigment and add that on the top for some nice shadow effect, especially to the areas at the bottom. You take some brown as well and fit that into the tree. Go for some smaller strokes at certain places, so there. As you can see, that tree has got some nice dark strokes. Now we need to add in the shadows. If adding in the shadows, back to the same mixture, desaturating it with red. Let's get back to adding. Need a lot of water because I want the mixture to be light. Going to add that here. That would be the shadow. I'm going to soften the edge of that region. I'm going to soften this region as well. I'm going to take that muted green color, and just going to create some strokes on the right side. This could be the shadow from some other tree. Just adding water, and filling, so Indian yellow and the ultramarine blue together. Indian yellow, ultramarine blue, and muting down with the cold red. Then just dropping in here on to the path. Just some dry strokes for the path. Going to need some dry strokes in the center as well. For that, there is my cold yellow, my cold green and then mixing with my saturated red. We need more of the colors. There. [inaudible] adding that. Now, let's get to adding more detail onto the grassland areas. I'm not trying to blend anything for this painting. I think it's perfectly all right even if I get some dry brush strokes or dry strokes and that's exactly how I want it. Here, I'm going to try and create some grassy texture for that just creating these lines upward. I'm using the dark green that we mixed. I think we can create a more darker green here at the end and create some stroke like that. It'll look as though it's grass growing on the path, same here, and make them smaller as you go towards the top. Smaller and lighter towards the top. Now, let me do some more here on this side. [NOISE] What else can we add? I think I'm going to add a fence here. For that, I'm going to mix that brown again. That would be mixing my Indian yellow, my warm blue, which is my ultramarine blue, and that creates a nice green shade and to that, I am going to desaturate it by adding my cool red. That creates a dark brown color. Here is the dark brown color. It almost looks like sepia, but I'm going to create a two-tone effect here. I'll add some yellow to one corner here, a bit of red. That'll give me a nice orange color. Let's create this fancy. It shouldn't be taller than the tree, so be careful and we also need to look at perspective like that. I had to make these thicker because I accidentally made this thicker obviously. [MUSIC] Let's add some fancy lines. This is like a rough painting just to get you accustomed with the primary colors, and color mixing. Don't worry too much about adding details and perfect strokes. This is a rough landscape. I think we've got that. Now let's get to adding that darker tone effect. For that I'm mixing my darker color. Let me take a bit more blue. That's the color like sepia now. I'll add that one to one end. Will give me a dark tone effect. Also, I'm going to drop these dark ground that I created, just going to drop some dots on my painting at random places. Probably it's like the rock. Now, what else? I think I want to create a more olive green color by mixing ultramarine blue, and the Indian yellow together, giving me the muted olive green color. I can further move it down by adding red and maybe an ad like land on this side. Add some brown tones at the bottom for the shadow and darker tones. Now, as you can see I've painted this whole thing with just one single brush because the focus was about the colors and not the brush that we're using. Maybe we'll add some spatters. Just going to take all those colors in my palette reviews and adding some spatters. We have to make sure that it doesn't fall on the sky. Let me close that up. Maybe I'll add a green splatter here. Maybe some green spatter here. We're good to go. As you can see, we've created a nice landscape just using the primary colors. You can create various effects. Because it's the same so I'm just adding some more brown onto my tree after it dries and be much better. I think maybe you can add some cold tones into your painting. For that, you can take some blue and drop it in some places. Like here, on this edge here, I have some blue tones that I'm adding so it's the ultramarine blue. Ad there and maybe I'll add some shades with my blue. Just to add the cold thing to our painting. Some coolness. Dropping a little bit of that blue into my tree as well. I think that's enough. We're absolutely done. After this completely dries, we can remove the tape. Let's remove the tape. Here is the final painting. We've painted this only with the primary colors, both the cool and warm versions. These colors are what we've used. I hope you like this and enjoy it. Now you know what are the possibilities using the primary colors and all you need is those primary colors in your palette and you can create all the amazing colors out there.