Create 117+ Gorgeous Colors Using 3 Colors + White

1. Introduction: Hi there. Welcome to create 117 gorgeous colors using only three colors and white. My name is Pamela Robertson. I'm an artist and I coach other artists in my own program, strong artist's life. Together. In this class, we're going to create a color chart. And in that color chart, we're going to end up with 117 gorgeous, harmonious and sometimes surprising colors all in using paints you already have. And without emptying out the art supply store. It is deceptively simple, but it is really powerful and it can be used again and again and discover new color combinations and create a wide range of harmonious colors. Creating this color chart can help you see and create more mature, sophisticated and complex colors. Colors that you can put into your paintings. And because you're using elevated colors you're painting is will naturally be elevated. My own work with color charts has really broadened my own, my color vocabulary. And it's inspired a whole beautiful new series, really a body of paintings that I'm working on. I'm so excited about still working on them, even though it's a limited palette. I love this palette. I wouldn't have found this palette had I not been messing around with color charts. Column charts is a great warm-up exercise. If you, before you go into the studio, can start mixing up some paint to get an excited about colors. And it's also a great exercise for those days when you really don't feel like painting like a big project, you've got something on the easel that you're maybe not really ready to move on. Or you're just not really in the mood to start something new. Color charts are great. Exercise kinda keep you creating. But without a lot of commitment. Because you could take a lot of breaks. Anyway. I'll explain more in the course. Let's get started. 2. Anatomy Of The Color Chart 1: Okay, so before we break open our paints and start making a color chart, I want to walk you through the anatomy of the color chart. I will admit the first time I came across the diagram for this color chart, it was pretty intimidating and looked very confusing and seemed like it was going to be really hard. So if I just threw this diagram at you and said there make your color chart, you'd be in the same position I was. And frankly, it wasn't a great situation to be in. So that's why we're going to take a moment, kinda walk through this whole thing, explain every bit of it. So then when you're making your own color chart, you get it, you know what you're doing and more importantly, why you're doing it. And I wanted to take a moment to talk about that. This color chart is very methodical. It is not just winging it. That means you have two really great benefits because of it. One is, it means you can get interrupted or take a break and just walk away from it for a long time. And whenever you come back to it, you'll know exactly where to start, right where you left off with no visual break and the whole thing, because the diagram is telling you what each square requires. But more importantly than that, this means that you can go back to a color chart you created a year or even longer ago and recreate those exact colors, shades, and tones. Because you have all of the information there. You know what colors you used, and you know how much of each color you used and how much white was introduced and what the third color was. It's fantastic. That's really the point of a color chart. It's not to make a color chart. It's not to fill in little squares and say I did something. The point of the color chart is to bring more sophisticated, complex, and harmonious colors to your art. This will improve your art. Alright, now we're really are going to look at the anatomy of a color chart down. Our color chart is 12 columns wide and ten rows deep. Each. There are three main sections to the color chart in each section, as you can see here, is four columns wide. The first section is colors a and B. The second section is colors B and C. And the last one, our colors ASC and a. Now the nine bottom rows of the entire color chart is where we introduce different levels of white. And finally, in the bottom five rows of each section, we introduce the third color in just a little tiny bit to show even more complexity and range for these colors that were focused on. So in the first section that focuses on colors, A&P, naturally we would introduce see, in the second section, focusing on colors B and C, we would introduce color a. Finally, we would introduce be in the final column. So that's how it all basically works. Okay? So this is the actual diagram that's going to tell you exactly what you need to do for each square of your color chart. And I want to mention too, as we go, as we develop the colors in this color chart, we're working column by column from top to bottom. We're not working across. And we're not working section by section, but column by column. Okay. Let me get this tool here. I want to talk about what all of these letters and numbers mean. Remember this was section, our first section which focuses on colors a and B. Now it doesn't matter what color you choose to be a or B or C is totally random and up to you and you can start with whichever one you want to just identify that one color is going to be your a. This column indicates that it's 100% the a color and no other colors being introduced in this column. It's just a straight out of the tube. Our second column is going to be two parts a mixed with one part b. The following column is going to be equal parts a and B. And after that comes one part a to two parts B. Now, this kinda makes sense then that the next color you're going to use is your beak color because slowly you've been introducing more and more of that be color. And so now we've got 100% B. And we do the same thing over again with RC color. Now we've got two parts, B to one part C, one part b to one part C, and finally one part B to part C. So naturally, now we're going to look at C. Then we do the same thing again, 221121 and 1.2 with a color. So you see it's kind of like a little circle we can loop around now, all the colors have been mixed together. And then you're probably wondering, okay, well, what are these percentages mean? Well, these percentages mean they tell you the percentage of pure pigment to white for each row. The top row is gonna be 100% pigment with no white added. The second row in our case. And you can change these later as you continue to develop your color chart and skills. But we're going to stick with this for right now. So our second row is gonna be 75% pigment to 25% white. Our next row is going to be split evenly half and half. The next one is going to be 25% pigment. In our final row in this section is 10% pigment. Now you say, why did you say final row, Pamela? Because you've got five more rows after that. Yes, I know. So as we're creating these columns of color, what I'm going to do, and you'll see in the demo, is I'm making five little piles of paint that coincide with these ratios mixed with white. And then for the bottom five rows, remember this is where we add our third color. So once I mix and lay those colors into the chart, into that column, then I'm going to add a little dot of the sea color and mix that into those little piles that I already have a dot of that color in each one of those piles, and then take that color and lay them into the corresponding square in that column. Just to remind you, in this section, we would add color of dot of color a in the final section. And in this one we would introduce just a little bit of B. And that is the whole chart. It's very simple once you understand the rhythm of it. So I have created a black and white diagram that I encourage you to download and print and use as a guide when you're making your color charts are now having to go back and forth from your paper to the computer. And I think you'll find that pretty helpful. So next we're gonna go over materials list and then we're going to start creating a color chart, I promise. See you then. 3. Materials List : Okay, we're gonna go over our materials list. Fortunately, there's not a whole lot, so this won't take too much time. We are going to create our color charts on paper. And I really like these Canson mixed media sketchbook. I like that. It keeps all the paper together. I like the paper itself has a really high-quality and it's very heavy, so it's not doing a lot of warping and buckling when you put wet media on it. I use the 11 by 14 size, which is perfect for our color charts. Now, if you don't have this kind of a sketchbook, you can certainly use watercolor paper and you can also use a heavy Bristol paper. Both of those will work really well. Okay. Since this is something that we're using acrylic width, I'm using my wet palette. If you don't know what a wet palette is and you use acrylics. I would encourage you to Google that and get one setup. It will change your experience with acrylic paints. This prevents the paint from drying very quickly. And depending especially on the climate that you live in, that can really be a, well, it is a game changer in any case, but it can really make your life a lot easier when you're using a wet palette with your acrylics. This is a must-have a palette knife. You do not need to have a metal wind like this. You could have a plastic one that will work just fine. But you do need a palette knife to mix the colors. You do not want to be using your brush to mix the colors because that will shorten the life of your brush. When you use it to mix, it pushes all of the paint up into the feral of the brush. And that's how you end up with the really splayed bristles. Now, depending on how you paint, you may end up there anyway, but certainly by using your brush to mix paints, you will hasten that process and you will wind up with a not-so-great brush a lot quicker. The other thing as far as keeping brushes clean and in good condition. I also use a shop towels. You can also use paper towels and I use this to clean off residue, residual paint on my brush before I plunk it in my paint water. And what that does is it traps a lot of the pigments and the actual paint here, instead of putting it in the water, this extends the life of my water. And it also makes recycling that water, making it clean enough to get back into your water system. It makes it a lot, lot less of a hassle because you're not dealing with so much water. This is a new habit I picked up in the last year and I really like it and you can like this. Paper towel has been kicking around for a few weeks and it still has some use out of it. So you're not just using one paper towel per use and tossing it. It's just I think it's just a little better or sustainable way to paint. Okay, you're going to need a pencil, you're going to need a measuring tool, a ruler, I'm using my tape measure. You will also need a straight edge. That could also be your ruler. But if you have a T-square, use a T-square. I don't have a T-square here. And I'm always mad that I don't have my T-square. I set up my color chart because the t-square makes this whole thing a lot easier. For my straight edge on this project, I'm just using the back of another sketchbook. Then you need white paint. And for this first color chart we're going to do, I'm really encouraging you for your first color chart to stick with the basic primaries. So to pick, pick a blue and a blue from your blue family and yellow from your yellow family and any red from your red family. After that, you can start getting more creative and working over into mono, monochromatic colors or more secondary colors, that kind of thing. But I think this kind of gives you the classic experience of creating a color chart. And that is it. Now, after all of that, we can finally start painting. Yay. 4. Setting Up The Color Chart: So I have marked out here 12 columns, 123, 456-789-1011, 12. And if we look at our download, we see we've got 12 rows that we're going to do of paint and we've got 12 columns and we're gonna do ten rows. So this is an 11 by 14, so the 12 columns fit nicely in the middle. And I am what I wanted to just add some leading a quarter-inch in-between every column, and I'll leave a quarter-inch in-between every row. And what you could do if you really wanted to or if you have this on hand, you could use a quarter inch white or a quarter inch tape and tape out these squares. If, and if you want to ensure that you get a very clean edge on each square, then you'll want to paint the thing with a paint the whole thing basically with a layer of acrylic gel medium. I started out when I first started Color Charts. I started doing it with the tape and spent a lot of time getting it just right and just perfect. And in the end what I found out is it wasn't that important. And I can get just as nice, neat look with just mapping it out in pencil and forgoing the paint, the tape. It's just a lot of trouble I thought for a color chart because this is an exercise, this is not a painting. I'm not super-duper concerned with it being gallery ready because it is an exercise. So I'm more if waiting for the tape and I'm waiting then for the acrylic gel to dry after you put all the tape down and all that just will make it even less likely for you to do actually get to mix colors and put them in a color chart. I say just do the more immediate method. I think I know I'm counting this out. I know there's a ruler here by just counting out to make sure because I think I'm lacking 123,456,789.10. Okay. There we go. And then I'm just going to use a straight edge that's long. That's actually another sketchbook just like this one so that I don't have to measure over here as well. And then also over here, I'm going to save a little bit of time, just a bit. So this might not end up being exactly perfect. Like my lines might end up a little bit on the diagonal when all is said and done. But like I said, I don't think that's the most important part of this color chart. The most important part is that your creating a color chart. When I, when, later on in this course, I'll show you the color charts that I've made and you'll see the first one I made with tape was incredibly wonky. And certainly nothing I would really show off except for it did kinda kick-start this whole fascination with color charts. And what these colored, what these color charts have done for me. It's really opened up my eyes about what you can do with just a small handful of colors. And it has actually in one of my color charts, has inspired my current body of work. It's a whole series using three colors of the color chart. And then I did introduce a dark umber into it to kind of add some more darks to the palette. And I'm absolutely enamored with this particular color combination that I would not have found had I not just been trying out different colors with the color chart with this method. So I'm going to speed this part up because this is not exciting. Okay, So that didn't take too long and you can see I snapped perfect here I've got some wonky lines which I may go back in and correct just because this does get rather squished here. But like I said, I could even correct it as I'm painting it if I really cared. So I think I'm going to just accept that I've got some wonky squares in here. And I'm just going to move forward without getting too hung up on the details. What I am going to do now is to choose my colors, the actual three colors that I'm going to use. And I'm going to map it out so that I can put this aside. Then I can just focus on the chart and then just on my paint here. I don't really have room for all three. I'm going to use a red pen so you can see this. And I'm choosing go really basic with a cad red light, a fellow blue, deep green shade, and a cad red, cadmium yellow. Those are gonna be my three colors. And I'm going to say that my cad red is Mike color a. So in square or square, zeros, zero here, or above column one, I'm going to designate this as the red. And that square. I might even want to put cad red and I'm going to add a line down here when we start painting so I can see that more clearly. So cad red is going to be my a. So now I'm just going to call it R for red and that's two. And then I'll go ahead and go with the blue. And that's going to be two parts, red to one part blue. And the next column is gonna be one part read to one part blue. And then the next one is going to be one part read to two parts, blue. So you see this transition is 100% read, twice as much read equal parts red and half as much red. That's the standard that we're going to go through all of them. Since then my color blue is going to, my color B is going to be the blue color. Because that was kind of figure that, that's your biggest one here. So now we're going to fade into more blue. So this is gonna be 100% blue. And I'm going to put in the fellow, I'm putting in here for my own notes, green. Just not that big of a deal. And then they're going to do the same thing again. So this time I'm going to start with blue to two, yellow, one. And then one part blue to one part yellow. And then one part blue to, whoops, to two parts yellow. And then color see obviously is gonna be the yellow. So this is going to be yellow CAD medium. And then we're gonna go yellow, two parts. And we're gonna go back to red. So red, one part, and then equal parts yellow, two equal parts red, and then one part yellow to two parts red. Okay? So if we go back here now, this starts to make a little bit more sense. We're going to get in our gradients of white added to each one of these colors and color combinations. And then on this bottom section here is going to be a small addition of the third color, right? So since we're mixing red and blue here, our third color mix is going to be yellow in this first section, and we'll just follow along like that. Now I want to put in my ratios here of white and let me put in this line real quick. So it's going to bug me. Find my pencil and get this in my wonky color chart. I guess I'm glad I'm doing this sort of wonky because that means this gives you freedom to not get too hung up on all of the minutiae of trying to make something perfect. If you're like me and you're not really set up very well to make a lot of straight lines. It is more difficult and you do end up with stuff like that, but it's not the point of the exercise, so I want you not to worry about it. You know, if you have the the room and you have a nice T-square, it'll be a lot easier for you to make. Straight lines and nice right angles everywhere. But for this exercise and trust, trust me, it's not that important. Alright? So now we're going to talk about, now are I'm just going to map out these ratios here. And this helps keep me on track while I'm painting because sometimes you can, you can get a little confused for kind of forget what you're doing. Is this is 100%, 100% of the pigment to wipe. So it'll be 100% pigment, 75% pigment, 50% pigment, 25% pigment, and ten per cent pigment. And then when we move on to this next part, we're going to start adding in this dot of our third color using the same colors that we already created. So we're going to put the 10% plus the third here, the 25% plus the third, and so on and so on. Now, you can also play with the ratios. And here too, if you've got bigger paper or you wanna do smaller squares, you could do this. You could do 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, and on and on and on, and then go back up the other way with your third color. This is not set in stone either, but I think this is gives you the best general sort of color range from 100%, um, of the saturation of that color or color combination to pretty low to 25%. If my book was bigger, I mean 10%, 10% is pretty good. I think a lot of times I'll end up getting less than 10% just because I'm interested to see how much color comes through, even when there's even more white. So this, again is not science. If we were to, we're sitting down together in a workshop using the exact same colors and making our charts. We would all end up with different shades. Once you leave that 100%, really just in the paint colors after that, everything else would be different. Because we're going to see it a little bit differently. Or one-to-one ratios and two to one ratios and all that. And I know mine sort of shift and change even through a color chart. But like I said, it's not that important. Okay, so next we're going to work on, I'm starting to actually mix color and paint. See you then. 5. Color A : Start with the cad red. And what I, what I have found doing this is you need a lot less color than, than you think, but you'd need to. Also be careful not to do enough color because then you'll run out in here and it's makes things a little more difficult. So this is E, It is a lot easier, I will say it's a lot easier with this sort of soft body paint that you have in Guizhou tube thing because you can control it a bit more, but this is totally doable with the heavier body paint as well. Just use your palette knife and just kinda pick what your size is, what your size is going to be making the same every time. Does that make sense? That didn't really make sense. Just kinda keep an eye on the portion that you're pulling it with your knife and just be very if you're always the same with that, it'll make it easier. As you go along. For red here, what I'm doing is I'm going to make a little pile of paint for each, each row, right? And as I go, if I can get a little less pigment down there, that will be even better because that means I'll be mixing less paint that will go to waste. So that's gonna be my hundred percent. And already I realized that was too much. I don't I don't I won't need that much and I tend to do that every time. It's probably should have been this size, but it's gonna be okay. Okay, So this is my 75%. I'm just going to squeeze about a quarter. About, I said about short of putting this on scales and weighing everything, it's not gonna be accurate. That's it. My one-to-one or my 50%, and this is gonna be my 25%. So I'm gonna do a little dot and a little bit more. And this is my 10%. Do quite a bit more. Just simple as that. Let's see, do I have a clean palette knife? I do. Perfection. Okay, so first I'm going to mix these. And I want to keep these together and not spread it out too much. I am working on a wet palette which will extend the life of my paints. But I don't want to get it so smeared around that I won't have enough left to use one. I'm down here at the bottom. This is cutting it really fine. But I think I'll make it. I hope I make it. If not, I'll show you how to fix it. Okay. And now my 5050, I think what you'll find if you're anything like me and the other students that have walked through this course is that we're really not mixing our colors very well, we think we are, but we find out pretty quickly that we're not spending enough time thoroughly mixing our paints. And you'll know you're not, when you go to latest paint down in these little squares and you have streaks of colors. It's you feel like you mix them, mix and mix, and you still get a streak. So it's very interesting to see an amine. It'll be amazed. It'll be cool if I can make all the paint I need to make with just these tiny little dots that I did. I do hate wasting paint. But it took me a little while to figure out how to mix just enough. When I'm not paying attention, I'll end up with too much paint. But as long as it's just a little bit too much, it doesn't bother me so much. It's just one, It's a lot too much that it bothers me. What you can do. Because in the beginning you may, like me struggle with making little piles of pain and end up with too much. You can take this paint and put it down, painted with a palette knife or brush or whatever on a canvas or a board. I paint on boards and use that as a basis for a new painting, right? So then you're building an underpainting already for a painting that goes forward. And especially if you're really kind of start to fall in love with these colors, you might find that very cool, very cool exercise to do. All right, so now we're going to actually paint. Here's my cad red. Obviously, if you go a little slower with this, then your squares will be a little bit neater. I am because of the camera and at an odd angle. So I'm not going to stress too much about making perfect gorgeous squares. In the end you'll see it's not really that important. And the most important part are the colors. What I do want you to do as much as you can, because some of the colors you might have picked are very transparent. But as much as you can, I want you to get the full, a full coverage on these colors. So if you are using very transparent paints, when you may want to go back once this is dry it a bit and do a second, a second layer. So you can really see the actual real saturation of that color without the white of the paper underneath interfering. I use a lot of transparent colors. But once we start adding the white, the transparency issue will dissipate. It will become much less of an issue. And you'll be able just to knock in these squares. Also when I'm not talking and I'm a paying, paying attention to what I'm doing. I'm also not cleaning my, my very dirty brush in the water right away because it shortens the lifespan of my of my cleaning water. And what I do now is I just wipe the brush off on a paper towel to get that paint off. And it's still a little damps like its color isn't going to contaminate that color too much. Just a tiny bit of it left on the brush. So obviously, if I was wanting to move from a color to a pure white, then I would definitely then after wiping the brush on the paper towel, then clean it in the water. But the benefit of putting it in a towel is that it means it extends the life of your paint water and makes that whole job of making sure your filthy acrylic paint water doesn't go back into the municipal water system until you've filtered it or cleaned it up? Okay. But sometimes I forget this is a new habit for me. So sometimes when I'm narrating what I'm doing, I forget. So please forgive me. If I'm not always doing what I say I do or would like you to do. And I don't usually spend a lot of time talking when I'm painting, even with color charts. And it's one of the things I really love about the color charts is because once you get going into this rhythm, I find this to be a really almost meditative practice and so exciting to watch these colors emerge as I make them column by column. Alright, so now I'm going to introduce our third color, which is our color. See in this section, which is the yellow. And I just need a tiny little dot camera shot. Just a little above, isn't it? There we go, a tiny little dot there. And now I'm going to introduce these colors into here. Okay? So I'm just picking up a little bit of yellow. And I'm not going to mix that whole bit of red to it because I use a lot more red paint than I actually needed. So I'm just adding that much. Yellow, introduced a little bit of white. They're not going to worry about it because this isn't science. So it's a very subtle shifts initially, in your idea of a dot of white or a dot of the third color is going to be different to mine. This is where everything starts to change. So that even if you were to do a color chart with the same colors over a period of time, those colors in each chart would be different. Because we are just kinda doing this by feel. But if you're anything like me, you're going to really start to thrill about. I probably need a little bit more about the amazing colors, the surprising colors that can come out of just this very, very simple palette. And I think we'll start to see that here. Okay? So I am going to wash off my brush because I've got some white on there and I don't want to contaminate that fully saturated orangeish color, Persimmon color I've got here. I don't know how much of a difference the camera is going to pick up with these reds Sunday, my camera has a tough time sometimes with reds. But in real life, this is a much more orangey red. And it's quite lovely. And so what you see also is that I'm making a read that still if it were especially if it were standing alone, it's still looks very, very red. But it actually is starting to look richer than the red right out of the tube. Because now it has a little bit more depth. I'm doing this upside down. Okay. So I started again at the top and I should've started here at the 10%. So I'm going to shift real quick and correct this, this is my 75%. Here. This is the danger of me thinking about what I wanted to say. That wasn't strictly about color chart, that was more about the richness of color. Once you start introducing more colors, I do need to mix up just a little bit more of that red. For my 100% square. There we go. But this is good too, because it shows you early on how you can very easily adjust any errors like that. It usually happens to me once. In most of my color charts. I get it wrong once. Okay. Now I'm going to jump to the 50% since I'm doing it this way now. And my 25% is here. I'm going to paint over that. Titanium white is excellent at coverage. So I didn't need to do anything heroic to correct that and it's pretty dry. So I should be able to put a nice fat layer on top and just delete the mistake. I'm gonna perfect. Here you start to see like, especially these two next to each other, you read this very kind of Pepto Bismol style pink. And then with just a little bit of yellow added, how much that color just shifted. It's very interesting. Alright, I'm going to fast-forward this and I'm going to complete the red section. 6. Color B : Alright, well, It's good morning to me. This is the following day. And I'm going to work on this color B section, which in this case is going to be this little blue. And I think here now we're really going to see the difference with the pure phthalo blue compared to that same blue when we add red to it. And I've already laid out my little piles. And now we're just going to throw in some white. I thought that was clogged. It's not. Let's see how we get going. Alright. So as a painter, we often think, okay, I wanna make color brighter or lighter and I'm going to add white to it in that. And so the white does make it lighter in that respect. But another thing that the white does is it also makes a fairly simple color. Simple, not really in a good way. It's called in the industry, it's called a candy color because it's very sweet, meaning there's not a lot of complexity to it. And it's a little OneNote. So this is where this color chart really will show you the different complexities you can get in a paler blue. But that's still, but it has a little more to it. And it's still a pale blue, but it just can be a bit more interesting. Then this very OneNote, candy or sweet. Just add a white to it. Once you start playing around with these colors, you will start to see those yourself and it will start to make more sense. Someone just telling you, because these are still really pretty colors, don't get me wrong. Fallow blue with a green shade is a really gorgeous color. But I think I will end up preferring this color mixed with a touch of some other color in the end, especially when I have them side-by-side. Okay? So we're starting with 100% blue. And you can see here too, that this is a much more transparent color. You may not be able to see it, but it is a more transparent color. It's not so transparent in this case that I would really worry about doing a second coat. There are other colors that are more shear when you put them down. And the other thing you see, I'm not doing this. I'm not adding water to any of these any of these paints. I'm not coming in with I'm coming in with a very just a damp brush. I'm not coming in with a wet brush, not introducing a lot of water into this. But see this blue, pale, bright Easter egg, blue next to that blue. And you start to see how these blues are. More complex. Yeah, There are different. So it may not be that, I'm not saying that they're better. Let's put it that way. I'm not saying that they're better, but I think they lean towards more interesting and just a bit more complex. And you can really see it. When you put these side-by-side walk going across that row, you can really see the difference. Alright, now we're gonna add our new third color, which is going to be our a color, which in this case is yellow. So I'm sorry, red, G's, that's red. Okay. So now we're going to start adding some complexity to this. And you can use your own determination of what a dot is. What is a dot? Depends. It depends on how much of that dot you want to see that dot of color you want to see in the paint to really see the differences. It depends how much paint you've got down that you're going to actually mix with. This is not a science. This is just an experiment, a very unscientific experiment. But right away you can see while these colors really shift with the introduction of such a strong pigment of cadmium red. And yet there's still blue. We'll start at the bottom. My my suggestion is that however you start doing this, just do it the same way every time. That will keep you from making a lot of dumb mistakes. So if you always start with dark, then you're going to paint to meet in the middle. There's not a wrong way to do it, but to keep it less confusing. And I'm just in love with these colors. Just in love. Anyway, my point is is that you keep just had to look back because for a minute and like I'm pretty sure this is the wrong color. That red is the wrong color, but it's not. So it's nice to have that chart kind of keep you on track, see a little bit of red in there and make sure that's mixed in. I'm going backwards again. My goodness. Narrating this. It does get me off focus that we're going to speed it up here in a minute so you won't have to sit through all of this, but you can watch the transformation of these colors as we continue to build new colors. And we're going to cover this up. I don't think with any problem. You see how important how unimportant that mistake truly was. Now easily it was taken care of. Gorgeous colors. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Alright, Like I said, I'm going to speed things up so you don't have to listen to me ramble. Wow. 7. Color C : And we're back for color C, or last bit here in our last section. And let's get started for the clean off my palette knife. This is a little razor blade holder for paint scraping. It's also good for cleaning that hard to or impossible to remove stuff off of a glass cook top. I found this one I used for my palette. Nice. You can also use just a safety blade, a safety razor blade tool. And without this, but this kinda helps you keep it at the right angle, makes it, makes it go a bit quicker. Alright. Here you go. Now with the yellow and see what sort of oranges and colors that would get with those. And as you're working on yours, if you end up with a lot of greens like this, look, how many greens I've got going through here. Green, green, a lot of greens all different and not even a full range. But look how many greens I'm getting. Especially if you're doing a lot of landscapes and floral, that kind of stuff, lots of greenery in it. And you're relying on your tubes of green to get those greens. I would ask you to start exploring making your own greens and seeing how much that will improve the interests of your work. And just the vitality and the maturity two of using these more complicated greens to green into your paintings. Because certainly when we look at nature, there are a lot of complicated greens. And I really do believe that mixing your own, we'll get you excuse me. We'll get you making a lot more of those types of greens rather than kind of what I see often in a lot of student work is kind of what I could terminate industrial green. The factory green because they're really working pretty much straight out of their tubes. And for whatever reason, I noticed those greens more. Then maybe other colors that you might be using pretty much straight out of the tube. There's something about the greens that I guess just don't ring true. Maybe because we're surrounded by the natural world. And maybe just, we're just more sensitive to sing that. I'm not sure, but I do notice that for myself as it relates to greens in a lot of student work. I think I want this one to be paler and got one picked up quite a bit of pigment. Really wanted to show the difference here. In these past couple of years, stemming off of these color charts, what I have found is that I am not very good at making pale, pale colors, not some, but now that I've gotten better at it, on my palette, my paintings have become a lot lighter, which is something that I was, that I intended to do. I'm getting a lot more sensitive to pale colors. And even to me like this, even at ten per cent don't read as particularly pale to me anymore. I'm definitely expanding my own understanding and knowledge and perception of color doing. Starting with these color charts, there's some other exercises that are helpful as well to really start seeing the value of a color. And the value is talking about how light or dark it actually is. This is a very transparent yellow. I don't use this color very much, this particular cad yellow. So I'm surprised that it is as transparent as it is. I would have thought it wouldn't be. So the more understanding you have about color, I don't mean understanding is that, you know, all the words secondary, tertiary, all the other words relating to the color wheel. I mean, that's nice to have, but it doesn't really help you understand color of the way I'm referring to understanding in this instance is that you see color. You can, you can, you can, you can look at a color and see what the value is. You're not being tricked because it's a bright color. You think it's a very light color. That's not always the case. Bright colors can actually be in value very, very dark. I should probably make a course on that. But what I mean by understanding is that you can start to understand this. Start to understand that you can with three colors plus white, make amid, can make 120 colors. You can make more colors. These are just the increments that we've, that we've put in. But you could make a whole other section down here that uses even more of the third color. There are hundreds of colors that you can make with just these three pigments and white. I think once you start to understand that and really see that in your own work, that's where that's where I think when you really do start to have an understanding of color, are secondary color in this section is going to be colored a, which is cadmium red, which means that down here, our third dot of color is going to be the blue. So let's introduce some blue to these yellows and see what happens. This blue is such a strong, strong pigment, so it's really going to change these colors up and dominate that. Yellow. But wow, look at that green. Talk about some spring green here. It's practically fluorescent, at least compared to the greens that we've developed so far. I will say too, I found doing the color charts now that I'm a much, I actually enjoy greens now a lot more than I ever have before. And I'm using a lot of greens actually in my painting because of the color charts, because I'm not using these industrial greens and creating greens. And I'm finding them really pleasing. To me. My audience really likes them and they're quite beautiful. Were before I really did avoid greens because I wasn't making colors like this. I was just using things out of the tube. Look at how much that color shifts from a really vibrant yellowy green to this really meant really a mint color. And that's because of all of the extra white. Okay. Wow. That's really, really pretty. What a great green. I wasn't sure how the greens would, would come up here on this section. We've got a very wide range. Why it really does change so much. 123, right? Okay. Really getting into this very minty green from that super vibrant. So interesting. So you see as I work through this, the perfection of the squares, they don't really mean that much. The edges being uneven. It doesn't really impact this. Now, if you wanted to turn this into a piece of art, like if this kicked off a series for here and we're gonna do gorgeous color charts than yeah, you would care more about that kind of thing. But that's not what this particular exercise is four. So I just wanted to remind you about that. I think in the beginning we can all get very freaked out about making these perfect squares. But as you see, these are not perfect. Boy, are they doing the job to show us how many different shades and values we can get with just this very small palette. All right, I'm going to speed things up and we'll get this finished. Hello. 8. Color Charts & Inspiration Found: So I have finished my color chart. I hope yours is finished as well. And I just wanted to point out a couple of things that I thought was so interesting. Especially in this column here where we have these really Persimmon color going down into this peachy sort of a tone. And then boom, adding in that little bit of blue, we get this incredible blue. Same thing happens over here. I wish I'd gotten that a little more opaque because I painted the wrong color in there the first time round. And this wasn't quite thick enough to truly cover it. So ashamed, but still what a great couple of colors. And then this just fades back, then back down to this really juicy earthy tone. Some really lovely earthy colors. It's a super nice gray color there. All the blues, wow, these blue greens and then this wide range of greens, just lovely. I wanted to mention you're sitting around on your with your acrylic paints laying around for a long time not getting used, they actually can go bad. This was a color chart. I started and realize that the red color I was using, the paint was probably not good anymore. And even now I'm noticing, I can rub on it and get a little bit of red pigmentation on my finger. But what was happening was that the red pigment was always separating. I would mix and mix and mix and then painted down and it would start separating as I brushed it down. And I don t know that the camera is really picking it up as well. But it's coming through a lot of these colors. So I just gave up because really what was the point of that to suffer through? I wanted to show you just a few other polar charts that I've done. This was the same color, the same fellow blue, the same red, but with a yellow light. So we have a slight difference here. I think it came up with, with a few more neutrals than the one I just completed this row here or column here, especially as a ton of neutrals. Just really nice spread of colors. And say if I'm going the right direction, okay, That's Here we go. Okay, So this was one that I did with Indian yellow with a cad red deep and a failover. The phthalo blue apparently uses Thaler blue lot my color charts. And just love again, this really wide range of greens. Some lovely blues, lovely blues, and some really nice earthy yellow tones. And some really nice dark super darks down over here. Like that one quite a bit. This one was an interesting one. I did an orange, a phthalo turquoise. So this is the oranges Othello Turquoise and a raw umber. And look at all of that really subtle, subtle, cool, chalky sort of greens through here. And some, again, some really nice neutrals and that blue, wow, that's nice. This one was yellow, ocher, quinacridone, magenta, and Othello Turquoise. I mean, it's like pastel Easter time. Wow, so interesting that yellow ocher would be involved in all of these very happy colors. That, that was a very interesting one. And again, some literally luscious greens. This one was, this one's a really special color chart for me. This was with the Indian yellow chromium green oxide and Prussian blue. And it came in. This was a much more monochromatic color chart. And these colors just got me so excited. And it is actually kicked off an entire series are really body of work at this point, where I'm just exclusively using these three colors plus white with some dark amber. And every once in awhile, a little bit of black just to really push those darks a lot darker. And that's when I really, this is when I really started to fall in love with the color charting because it inspired all of these colors that I never would use. I didn't use the chromium green oxide. It didn't really know how to use it. And so it just kinda sat around for awhile and it wasn't until I used it in this chart did I discover the range and the complexity that I can get into that color that I didn't know what else to do with. So that's been really exciting and I think that's another great thing with color charts. If you've got a color that you bought to try out. It didn't really work. And you don't really know what to do with it. I would I would put it into a color chart and see what kind of colors become a bit. I should probably use the chromium green more in some color charts that I do. And so I wanted to show you my very first color chart. It's very wonky. I don't really like measuring and all of that. So you can tell I didn't really take a lot of time. It did it as quickly as possible. This was based on the Zorn palette, which was a famous Swedish I believe, or Swiss. I apologize, I'm not remembering. Painter. And he worked almost exclusively at least for a time in what was called then they end up being called the Zorn palette. And it was yellow ochre, it was actually ivory black. I used Mars Black because I don't have ivory black. And I believe it's cad red light. I believe that's correct. I might get I might have that one wrong too. There may be a different colored. Obviously, he was working in oils and this is hundreds of years ago, so it may have been a different read that he was working in, but these colors in acrylic approximate very closely the kinds of colors he was working on. And he was he was able to get a lot of flesh tones and a lot of very earthy neutrals and no blue. So that's where my whole color chart journey started. And I'll show you where it's ended up. So like I said, it became totally enamored with the color chart, with that monochromatic blue, green, and yellow. And, um, and I dedicated myself to making paintings with those colors plus a raw umber. And these are the kinds of paintings I've been coming up with. I'm just showing you obviously the smaller ones because they're easier to show on this camera setup. So I did this series of these six-by-six is where I divided them up and did one that was more kind of leaned more towards the yellow and ones that lend leaned more towards the blue and others that obviously more towards the green. And this one was an earlier one. This is one of the first ones I did with this color palette. And as you can see, I've been working to really go lighter and lighter. When I first created this one, I thought this one was extremely light. But now you can see how far I've been able to push my light values. And it's just taking me time to understand that and actually see it in my work. It's very interesting to me how we are fairly blind to our own work. This is a 12 by 12. Here is not as straight black. It's actually the Prussian blue with some black and some raw amber in it, bring it down very close to black. But if you look closely, you start to see some of the blue undertones in that. And this is the first time I'm, like I said, I'm using greens in my painting. And the greens keep being, keep turning out to be my favorite colors. Which is a bit surprising. And then here's another one a little bit later. And you can tell because it's not I guess it is from the same. I'm sorry, this is the same, but a bit lighter, focusing more on the lighter qualities. Anyway, I just wanted to share that not to say, Hey, look, my art is amazing. I already love it. That's okay. I just wanted to show you how you can use these color charts to really kick off something that is important to you and special to you and exciting to you. And to really bring that quality of excitement and enthusiasm into your new work with some fresh insight about color and using colors that you've typically wouldn't use, please. I would love it if you posted your color charts in the final product section of this course, just to see what colors you're using. And I really encourage you to do more than one. Start with the basic, with the red, yellow, and blue. And then after that, move into the different colors where you're doing some maybe more monochromatic or maybe doing one that's just neutrals. Maybe just a yellow ocher and an umber, and then maybe throw in an odd color and see what happens with that. I mean, there's so many different ways you can go with this anyway. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you learn a lot from this and I hope that you carry this exercise on with you for the rest of your career as a painter. Have a good one. Thanks so much. Bye bye.