Break Your Color Rut in Minutes – The Kindergarten Approach

1. Introduction: You're stuck in a color rat, you're always picking the same colors again and again. You're maybe using them out of the tube, and that way you just don't get a lot of variation, or you are mixing your colors, but you always use the same recipes that you feel comfortable with. I want to show you an exercise to break out of that t and open up to a lot more color possibilities in your art. My name is Cornelia, and I'm a full time fine artist and art mentor, and I focus on abstract acrylic and mixed media painting. So in this class, I will show you my go to exercise to break out of a color rat, like find new colors and color combinations that really speak to you that are really you, that you would not have thought of, maybe just thinking about what color could I mix? It's really vital to see it in front of you. That's what we will do. So let's just dive in. 2. Your Class Project: For the class project, I just want you to work along with me. You start out with two different hues, white and black, and we'll make a variety of different tin stones and shades and hues that we can get from these two on this large sheet. Then you will take a picture and upload that as your class project. If you want to take it further, I will also show you how to create the swatches and things like that, you can, of course, also do that. But the basic requirement for the class project is to do this one exercise color mixing sheet. So let's get going. I 3. The Materials You’ll Need : So for this exercise, you need a maximum of five different colors, and that includes black and white. You will need some brushes. You will need a large sheet of paper. I'm using mixed media paper. This has 300 GSM, but you can use any paper you want, the thinner it is, obviously, the more it will buckle. But for this exercise, it's not so relevant. Then you will also need a sheet of paper where you can cut out a window. This is called the viewfinder, and this helps you then isolate some color watches that you want to cut out and collect in a sketchbook for later reference. 4. Start to Play With Two Colors: So personally, I paint a lot with the primaries, but I also have other tubes, I have this green and I have this yellow oxide, and it's practically unused because I I really like to mix my paints. So sometimes when I want to mix things up, get more variation, I force myself to use paint tubes that I hardly use. That way, I get colors, but I'm new to my work that get me out of the comfort zone and open me up to new ideas for my work. So let's just do that now with the yellow oxide and the light green permanent and I will then later on bring in a third color. Maybe this maybe I will change my mind. So we'll see so to get started, put out some paints on your paper. So I have this large mixed media block. It is a pad that is glued on the sides. But if you don't have that, you might want to tape your paper to your table so that it doesn't slide around. So this hopefully won't slide around too much because it's a little bit more heavy being a whole pad of paper. So I've put out white black and my two colors, and now I'm just going to play, and I call this the kindergarten approach. Kids are so free when they mix colors. Like, they just go, bam, bam, bam, and then they mix it, and then they get muddy colors and they don't care. And they are excited because, well, now I've mixed black, and now I've mixed this and that, and it's really fun to watch them do that. And we want to, like, try to get into that energy as well. It's a play. It's just an exploration. There's no outcome attached to it. We are not forcing to have now, at the end ten colos watches that we are excited to use in your work. We're open to what will happen and we're just going to have fun. So let's get started. Before I start, I'm just going to wet my paintbrush. This is just so that the paint doesn't dry near the ferro. It's just a little bit better when you paint with acrylic paints. But actually, in this case, we don't really need water. I'll just start mixing these and just go ahead. The larger the paper that you use, the larger your brushes maybe should be. That makes it a little bit more easy. As you want to think a little bit about making a little bit larger areas of each color that you get so that you then have the possibility to have these swatches. So now I will try to add white. I get this pretty green here. And now let's see what happens when I add more of that. I was maybe a little bit much so you really will see over time, how much you need to add to create a subtle shift. We're not washing out our brush which is working along with what we have. If you want to, you can cover the paper in advance with chess so that way it won't soak up the paint so much, make it a little bit easier to mix right on the page because right now it's really soaking up the paint very, very quickly, so it makes it a little bit hard to mix. And if you want to, I'm going to stand up now because it feels a little bit strenuous on my arm, so let's just Now, when you want to go lighter, what you want to do in between is, like, you want to either wipe out your brush, like, at least wipe out your brush. You might even want to wash it because, like, when you have dark paints in it, it's really hard to get lighter again. This is my result for now. This is what I could get. They are probably I could approach this a little bit more scientifically, adding a little bit more of this and adding a little bit more of that and make this super exact chart where I just incrementally add a little bit of the other color that way. The way I did it is just slowly bit more playful. But already I found colors that I really enjoy what I don't really enjoy is when I started out this really pure, I really don't resonate with the screen at all, so I don't know why I bought it. But I do like this here. I like the screen, I like the grayish green, I like the spage. I even like the darks. I like these dogs a lot and here also have these lighter shades. But it's more in this area in the muted colors that I see a lot of potential for using these colors to give those darks a little bit more of a bias towards a green or brown. Now I'm going to do the same thing and I'm going to bring in another color. Let me get that off my sheet and then we'll do a second one. 5. Add a Third Color: Now I will bring in another color. I will still use the green but I don't like the ochre, that's okay. I will also have a blue. Okay, so now I have three colors and white and black and will just do the same. I will just start by trying what these make together. Let's see what we've got. When you add white, you can more easily see the color. So what a beautiful light gray blue that is. I don't like that petrol. Like, color, so I want to go back there. I need to clean my brush a little bit. I don't have so much white in there. I guess we have all the colors for that. I'm good. Okay, so that's my second sheet. Again, strangely enough, I went into a lot of greens and not enough blues. Probably because my original intention was to use the green and the ochre. I stayed a lot in the greens. I just have very few blues. I could have done a little bit more blue, I guess. So you can keep doing and doing this. It really there's so many possibilities. So now I will leave this to dry and then I will show you the next step. I 6. Find New Colors With a Viewfinder: Now that my first exercise sheet is dry, I can show you how I would go about finding colors that I enjoy. The next step is to have a few finder ready or to make yourself a few finders. You want to make a square that is anywhere 2-3 ", which is three to 7 centimeters. Now there's two ways you can do this. You can either use a pretty small few finders, so you just cut out a square out of a piece of paper. In a very small size. That way you will be able to isolate pure color or you use a little bit a larger one and depending on how large of color splotches areas you have, you will still be able to get pure colors, but you will also be able to catch some interesting combinations. And for me, I really like that combination, for example, I like the gray with the light green and the ochre. Then I could already think a little bit about composition. So I can't help myself. So doing it like that, I'm almost immediately thinking, this is the same amount, the same space. So I would decide whether this would rather be about the gray or about the beige. So I do like this color combination. And you can now do both. I could have this color combination, and then I could also just maybe have a swatch of the color. And in this case, I also quite enjoy the the slight variation between the colors. They're all dark. I'm going to look for watches. I mean, of course, I could now take swatches from all of these colors as I see them. But again, I'm seeing a combination that I like. I like this gray with this green. Wouldn't necessarily think this color is thin. But of course, you can now just cut out a few. You want the beige. I all this. And then what you want to do is you want to cut out these things here. So now you can already see that I have found a really nice, really um, almost monochromatic color palette in the greens and the yellows. So obviously, when I would use that, I would think of this, for example, that I would want to use more of a vibrant color, so I might cut out that pure ochre after all, and I already remember how I liked this combination, which is more like this next to each other. So you don't like when you put them like that, it looks like that's value. But, um, you will then later on combine them and you can now see how do these look next to each other and what do I like? Is this exciting for me or do I like this subtlety, you know? I have really a lot of colors now that I don't usually use this color. This is really interesting to know. 7. Creating a Palette & Final Thoughts: So these are some watches and color combinations, little compositions that I picked out for my first sheet. And in the first one, remember, I used two colors that I normally don't really use in my paintings. So it felt like really out of my comfort zone. I haven't picked so many watches because they didn't resonate so much. But what I then did in my second one is I added one of my favorite blues, which is ultramarine blue. Now this becomes more interesting. This is more resonating with me. There are lots of colors that I really, really enjoy. And I will not be picking out all of these now, but thinking of what I'm having now, if that was my color palt, I would want to bring in something more vibrant, more different because this is all kind of very much the same. Well, let me check. That was the viewfinder I used. So I would think about bringing in more of this pure blue, more turquoise. Here I find an interesting composition already that I would probably use larger. This is an interesting combination that I would enjoy and I can think I want to have more flat color or more fat color or more fat? So I've now cut out a couple of swatches and I could do a ton more and it's then really fun to go ahead and look at these, look at the combinations, see what you enjoy, what you like, and then these become the palettes for your next painting maybe. So whenever you feel stuck, the next time, don't overthink it just like mentally go back into the mind of you as you were in kindergarten and with that approach, just play and experiment. Give yourself some limitations, don't use all of the colors at once, just a little bit challenge yourself to mix colors that you don't usually work with and find new combinations, new colors that really resonate with you. Because when you have this large sheet with all these colors there, you can really decide, I like that, I like that and I don't like the other. Then you can really pick and find a a new color or many new colors that you're excited to use the next time you paint. If you like the class, let me review. This is so helpful, not only for me to get feedback, but also for other students so that they know if this is the right class for them. Also, don't forget to upload a class project. I really look forward to seeing your exercise sheets, your swatches. And whatever you created. And if you want to learn more about acrylic painting, take my more comprehensive class, acrylic painting for beginners and follow me here on skill share so you be notified about future classes and giveaways and I'll see you in my next class. Have fun creating by for now.