How To Mix Luminous Watercolors

1. Introduction: Hi there. I'm gonna guarantee an artist, surface designer and online teacher. In this class, I will show you all to meet luminous watercolors by using practical examples and a limited color palette. In fact, we're going to use just six minutes. I have prepared some downloads for you to help you with the templates and give you examples you can keep with you and refer back anytime you want. First, I will go through the materials we need for the class. Then I will give you an overview of the most important characteristics of watercolor implements these characteristics you should keep in mind when you buy a news watercolor paints. Next, I will explain what a split primary system is and why it is so important for luminous color mixing. I will also explain about color bias, which is probably the most important concept to learn when you mixing luminous colors. But I will also show you why we get muddy colors and how you can avoid them. We will make a very special color wheel, and we will have column mixing recipe cards. So you can start building a color recipe library that you can refer to times and times. Again. I will show you how to use your color swatches to color match leaves and petals, for example. At the end, we will dive into a fun project. I designed this class to take away the fear of ethics in and give you the skills and knowledge to be able to make luminous colors anytime you want, without the frustration of ending up with muddy colors. This class is for beginner watercolor artist. But you may find it useful even if you've been painting for a little while. By the end of the class, your column mixing skills will have been taken to a different level. So if you're ready, let's get started. 2. Class Project: For this class, I thought we could have some mini-projects that buildup to define a project which is as more abstract painting done using only the three primary colors. For the first project is something simple. Take all the primary colors you have in your paint box and watch them next to each other. You can identify which and the COO, which the word colors. For project number two, following my sample, create one or more cooler abuse. You can use the six primary colors, cooler, one ratio of each color. And you can make the color a bit smaller and create maybe one wheel for each set of cool and warm colors in your palette. For project number three, create color recipe cards for each of your cool and warm primaries. Way I showed you in the lesson, which is called to watch it up. You can add more circles and therefore more steps in the mixes. Or you can add list. Because if you like, for project number four, using what you have learned about mixing colors, paint them admins upset. Painting, using just the three primary colors. You can follow my example and paint an abstract landscape or an abstract flora or any other abstract subject that you like. You can experiment with different sets of cold and warm primaries. The possibilities are really endless. You will convey the link to your downloads in the description and Bridget section. And once you click on the link, you will need a password to access the page. And the password is. You can then download the files. Be sure to share your project in the budget section. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'm here for you. 3. Materials: For this class, you won't need a lot of materials. I have quite a few things here. I think I got everything you need. You will need some paper. You can use something like this. For example, the Canson XL aquarium. It's not very expensive, so not About You can find it on Amazon for assembly line. We are going to do some color cards. And if you want to use, for example, if you, for your normal works, your normal paintings, you want to use itis paper just as an example because that's what they use. I use this paper at is to do the cards and I will show you how to do these. These are just the mixes between cold and warm colors. This is on paper. So I know that when I go to do my final painting, when he mixed the paper, it will look exactly the same as these ones. But if you use, if I use this paper, the colors will be different, will look different from when I use this paper. So hopefully this makes sense. You can use the cheaper paper for this exercises. Doesn't have to be expensive Arches paper. But just be aware that the color will change slightly depending on what paper you use. Alright, so that's the paper. Then you will need to paint. You won't need all these points. It's just that they have been here. In fact, for this class, you will only need six page. And I'll show you which one, which one you can use. But essentially you would need two yellows, two reds, and two blues. And that's all you need. Anything else? The only thing I would recommend is to use this great if you can, because this student grade paints less pigment, so you won't get as nice as a result. With a student grade as you would with a discrete. After all, if you only need six pins, it wouldn't be a huge amount of money to be spent. Okay. Of course you will need the appellate. Again, you can use inability. You have available. I have this one because this one is quite good. When do those color codes, because I will mix some color here. For example, I will put the main corridor, the yellow here, maybe the blue here. And then I will add some blue, a little bit of detail to the yellow and then dilute each mix. Retain to do vision and dental division. So that's the main color dusty diluted version, but a bit closer. So main color diluted version. But you can do this with any other palette, doesn't have to be this many wells. So I use ceramic palette. You can use plastic if you don't want to buy the ceramic. But again, if you get serious about watercolor painting, then I would advise you to buy the ceramic palette because it doesn't get stained like the plastic ones. We're going to need some brushes. Let's get them a bit closer. This one. And this one. These are just brushes for mixing paint. Their old brushes and the normal brushes will get any brush will get damaged when you pick up the paint to mix it. I use some old ones and so it doesn't matter too much if they get damaged or if they get the loose hair or anything. So some old pressures will be good. You can have just one if you want. I have two, but then we have some different brushes. So you would need to just one really. You don't need this many. Maybe bigger and a smaller one. These are different for grades. So there's the expensive brush, which is a Winsor and Newton Series seven, this is a miniature, there's a normal CDF soon as well. These are a bit expensive, nice, soft here, so they're really nice. But for this type of exercise, you can use a cheaper brush. You can use a synthetic one or a mixed one. I have here a Princeton brush. I can show you. And then there is a, this is from the SAA Cholesky round. And then this is a proactive brush. This one here. And then a Winsor and Newton professional watercolor, which sort of mid-range when it comes to price. Just any brush that is ascites. You can do your swatches. Come to the brushes. You will need some pencils and an eraser, just like any other result is fine. I mean, I have this one as well, which is Tombow mono 0, which is a very small eraser to get into difficult corners bits. Then I have a mechanical pencil. You can use that or you can use a normal pencil, a pen if you want to write your information with dependent or you can just write it with a pencil. Let's find CSOs if you want to do the cards. So I'm going to do it as a booklet, as you can see, now will bind all these the signatures, the code. Once this is just empty, one, once these are all done, are we buying them into a book? But you can do single-pass. You can cut them, and you can use this. To do that. Ruler will be helpful. I also put this here. For the watercolor. You would need some empty jars. Always use 21 for clean water, one for dirty water to wash your brushes. You don't want to pick up the dirty water to use for your clean colors because it might change the color. And you will need some paper Taiwan and some cotton towel I use as well. As you can see here. There's lots of colors been used. Time to watch it. I think. I have some downloads for you. I've made this one for the color wheel. You don't have to use this by the way. So you can use this or you can use a compass and draw the circle. This one is to make your life easier because I'm going to talk about called the cool and warm colors. So I have them written here and you can just follow along. When I do this. And in this one I put something like a color wheel underneath. You can see this better, but we will talk about this in another lesson. But you can download that. And these are the templates for your color cards. Wanted to do. Column mixing recipes. You can do, you can use this and there is a visual, so there's that question. So you can put it on a light box and just copy it. You can use one of these to do the circles. This is a circle template. I think it's called quite easily and just use one of these for the template. So just put it like that and do the circle. But also I put a lighter version. You can just about see, I think if you want, if you have a printer that takes watercolor paper, you might have that choice. Then you can use a watercolor like A4 paper, and it breed it directly on your printer. You can use the lighter versions and it's not as obvious as this little circle. That's another thing you can do. And then I've put a list of cool and warm colors from different mix. Winsor Newton, Daniel Smith. I wrote here where they belong and if they're cooler, warm. So it's not an extensive list by all means, but it gives you a few choices because I'm going to use some of these colors, but you might not have this. And I don't want you to rush in by new colors. You can just use whatever you have available. Hopefully you will have at least some of these colors. If not, Winsor Newton, maybe Daniel Smith, you can mix them. If you have someone, one make, some of the other make. I have different mates. I have a two or three makes most of my colors. I went to the Newton, but I mixed them with no problem. And of course, I mean, it is optional, but it would recommend you to get color wheel because it's especially if you're just starting, it gives you an idea when you mixing the colors, which are the cool colors, which are the warm colors. And you can see it straightaway with a color wheel. Not a huge amount of money. You can find it in any good art shop online wherever you want. I think I have covered everything we need in the class, hopefully. But just to guess, I would mention it as we go along. If you need something is but I think we're all good. See you in the next lesson. 4. Undesrtanding Watercolors: If there is one thing that makes watercolors patient is their luminosity. And this is achieved thanks to an important characteristic of watercolors, which is the transparency. However, when they first started with using watercolors, more often than not, my mixes where from the glomerulus and transparent, many of the colors I had mixed actually could be better described as mud, muddy. This happens when we end up either mixing too many colors for mixing the wrong colors. I will go more in depth about these in another lesson. But I wanted to just quickly show you an example of a muddy color. All right, so if I mix a cadmium yellow, which is an opaque, Let's add a little bit of water. We go and we'll add a little bit of the blue. One of those difficult colors to say, we made a green. And we put it here during align with the pencil. As you can see, it's very opaque. So let's try using transparent colors. I'm going to use Winsor blue, green shade, which should be this one. You can see this color is very transparent. And they, I think they are turning blue, is actually a semi-transparent, but the cadmium is very opaque. Instead of the cadmium are going to use answer yellow. This one is one of the Daniel Smith. I remember well, yes, studies maybe it's transparent. We make this green, It's quite a bright green as well. And let's put it here. You can see here, this is very opaque and kind of muddy. This is quite transparent and bright. Hopefully you can see this properly. Just to show you the difference when you use transparent color. So when you use opaque colors, of course, sometimes you maybe feel like you need somebody like this color, depending what your painting. But if you wanted to do something like botanical painting, I would advise you to always use transplant in colors. This has happened to all of us, but they couldn't use is, it can be avoided just by getting to know your colors. And this is the aim of this class to give you the tools and knowledge to be able to make informed decisions when column mixing so that you don't have to waste anymore time and paint. In the next lesson, I'm going to briefly talk about the characteristics of watercolor paint. And what are the properties of watercolor you should be aware of. 5. Characteristcs of Watercolor: Let's have a closer look now at watercolor paint. I always advise my students to use good materials. And maybe you don't want to go for the top of the range, especially if you're just starting out. But try to use good quality materials. Because if you use the cheap stuff that you find that the discount shop, it's going to give you, it's not going to give you good results. And you will end up disappointed, most likely. What the colors are made with a binder, usually gamma NAMI gun and a big one or more pigments. Important properties of pigments. Light fastness, transparency, opacity, and pigment number. We're going to talk above this a little bit more in detail now. So transparency is essential when you're doing work with many layers. For example, botanical painting or landscapes, you would find symbol, symbols on the tubes or patterns that would tell you how transparent or opaque pigment is. If you want your paintings to be vibrant, luminous, I advise you to try and use transparent or semi-transparent paint. Paint as much as possible. Especially if you want to do botanical painting. Light fastness is also important to consider and had to say. It describes how resistant to fading a pigment is when it's exposed to light. Pigments can be like first or fugitive. I would avoid using the fugitive ones. Of course, if you're planning to sell all the prints of your words and then not originals than the light fastness is less well-conserved because you can store the original away from light and you probably going to work from a scanned image anyway. But if you want to, salary denotes over if you wanted to take part in exhibitions or even if you want to find your painting in your home, then I would recommend using a faster page. Again, the symbols for light fastness. There is a vacant society for testing Materials, ASTM. They used the Roman numbers from one to five, where one is very light fast and five is for light fastness. So I would advise you to use pigments with either one or two. Winsor. And Newton also uses the permanent description. So it uses the lithos a to C, where AA is very permanent and C is fugitive. So again, try to use AA or a pigment wherever, whenever it's possible. Pigment number is another important thing to consider. If you look at the button day paint two, you will see some letters and numbers. These represent what pigments are in the paint. For example, if you see 109, this is the pigment red. 109. The number indicates that specific pigment. If you only have one number, it means the other one pigment was used to make the paint. This is preferable to cause, which are made when more than one pigment. This is because the more pigments you mix, the easier it is to make math. If you have three pigments already in one tube, then that's not going to help. To make, to make pure and transparent colors. We want our veins to be as simple as possible. Of course, I'm not telling you to absolutely avoid close with more than one pigment, but just be aware of this and when you're mixing colors, just keep this in mind. In the next lesson I'm going to talk about the split primary system and why it's so important. 6. The Slpit Primary System: Normally when you told is that by mixing red, blue, and yellow, you can obtain all the colors you need. And this is true up to a certain point. When I first started painting, I would see a bright, vibrant purple color, for example. I've tried to reproduce it by mixing red and blue. Instead of that brilliant paper, I will get muddy, murky paper color. Not the brilliant people that I was looking for. I can show you an example of this. This is an example of where you stop. And sometimes before I knew about the color bias and before I knew nothing about column mixing would pick up, pick red color for example, clinic return rate. That's this one here. So we'll pick up a bit of color, then mix it with a blue to make a purple. But I wish choose any old blue. Let's see, Let's get this one here. The Winsor blue, green shade. Maybe I put too much blue in here. Put a little bit more red. Then I will make this sort of purple. So as you can see, very, very luminous, dark, murky mix. Instead, if we know about quarter of bias, we can pick up the right red and blue. If I use a cool red, Let's use quinacridone, magenta. Let's pick a bit more. Let's use this one here. Then. Warm blue. I'm going to use French Ultramarine. Mix it here. Then we'll have a more luminous purple. Hopefully you can see the difference. The video because sometimes the colors are a bit changed. But I think you can see this mix here. With the wrong bias. You get. I keep saying wrong, but you might need that sort of color for somebody if you're looking for a shadow color, landscape painting. But if you want the luminous paper, then that's their right to mix. I use the color red and a warm blue. And don't worry, I'm going to talk about this and give you some material that you can read. You can have a look. You don't have to memorize everything. You'll take copious notes. You can take the notes, of course, if you wanted to, but we'll go more in depth. But this is just an example. Just to review whether primary color is Ithaca that cannot be obtained from mixing any other color. Not two colors will give you blue or red. Although if you mix a magenta color, such as quinacridone, magenta and a cool yellow, you can get actually a red color. Let's see an example of that. Here. I'm just adding the quinacridone magenta, just as it is on the page to show you the difference when I mix with the yellow and it would give us a read. This was Winsor lemon. So this gives us a, quite a dark red, as you can see here. Quite dark. And then I'm making another mix again with the magenta. And this time I'm going to put Hansa yellow in the mix. Is another cool yellow. But it's different, slightly different from the other one. You would get a different thread, which in this case it's a bit more bright, as you can see here. Then I can add a bit more. Yellow and red, make the color even brighter. The real primaries are actually magenta, cyan, and yellow. If you think about it, it's like the CMYK system used by the printers. On, in this case, we don't have the k, which represents the black color. We only have the CMY. What is the split primary system and why do we need it? In this type of system? We have a warm and a cool version of each of the three primaries. So there is a cool and a warm yellow and a warm red and the same for group. Now with this tree paints, it is possible to mix a huge variety of colors. I do use different cooler warm yellows, blues, and reds for my botanical painting. You don't have to stick to just one set of cool and warm colors. But if you're just starting out and you want to limit your colors, then understanding how the split primary system works will save you a lot of money because you can start off with just six paints. Besides using a limited palette will improve the color harmony of your paintings because all the colors would have been mixed by the same starting set of paints. This is actually why many artists to use a limited palette. Learn how the system works and your color mixing will improve so much. And in the next lesson, I will explain more in depth how the system works. 7. Understanding Color Bias: In the previous lesson, we talked about having a cool and a warm version for each primary color. You might be wondering why we need this. One important thing to know is that every color and saw also the primary colors as a color bias, which means they tend toward a cold or a warm bias. We can see here, I've made this for you and I will put a copy on your downloads. Generally speaking, if a color tends towards a blue or a green, they have a cold bias. If we have a look at the color wheel, colors that on this side, so blue and green, I have a cold bias and colors that fall on this side. So orange, red, violet, generally speaking, of a warm bias. To check for a sample. If a read is a cool or warm red, you should check if it's leaning towards orange, which is warm, or towards blue which is cool. Sometimes it's difficult to see straightaway if we have an orange, red or a more bluish rate. But if your swatch them next to each other, then you will be able to see more easily. If that color tends more towards a warmer orange or a cooler blue. Hopefully you can see this here. I have the primary colors here and the bias as well. This is a warm red, so you can see that it tends towards orient. This is a caret which obviously tends towards violet, purple, and the blue side. When you watch them, you can put them even closer to each other. You can see what I mean. And let me just do that for you. So I'm going to get these colors. It's quinacridone red, which is our warm red. And quinacridone magenta. You can see when they are next to each other. They obviously have a different bias. You can do that with any of your primary colors. If we look here, we see that the French ultramarine, which is the warm blue as tendency to purple while the Winsor blue and green shade, which is the COOH group, as a tendency to green. The same with the yellow. So transparent yellow as a tendency to orange and Winsor lemon, you can see is much more co-owners. A tendency to green. Color bias is very important when you're mixing your colors. Because for example, I showed you here, I put some examples for you. When you mix a warm red, the quinacridone red with a warm yellow, transplant, a yellow. Both of them have an orange bias. So these Indies, this means that it will give you a bright orange. If we mix a cool red, which has a bias towards purple and blue, and the warm red and warm yellow which has a tendency to orange, then you would get a brown orange because the bias is not both towards orange. One goes towards orange, one goes towards the opposite side, towards purple. The same here with blue and yellow. We have a cool yellow which is a, as a tendency to green. In a cool blue which has a tendency to green. So you would get a bright green, which sometimes you will need to turn down because there's not many really green, this bright in nature. Very rare. But anyway, that's the theory. If you're mixing a cool yellow also the Winsor Lemon, which has a green tendency with a warm blue, which is a tendency to red and purple bias, then you would get a dark green, which you probably need sometimes if you want to paint botanical subjects, landscapes, not all greens are bright. Some of them are a bit done. This is why it's important to know the color bias of your, of your primary colors. Because if you're thinking of mixing a bright orange, then straight away, you know that you need a warm red and warm yellow. You wouldn't mix a career than a warm yellow because otherwise you won't get a bright orange. I have a little homework for you if you like to do it. You don't have to, but it's always good practice. I would like you to make some swatches of your primary colors. Just the ones who are viewed enough to buy any of these. Just get your warm and cold primaries. I mean, just getting your red, reds, yellows and blues. And then make us watch next to each other and try to see if they are warm or if they're cool. And if you have any problems, let me know and I'll see if I can help deal with that. In the next lesson, I will explain about muddy colors and way they happen. See you in the next lesson. 8. Driving Us "Mud" : I know what you're thinking. If this is a class about mixing luminous colors and we try to avoid mud, why are we talking about it? Well, in order for you to understand how to avoid making my muddy colors, It's important to know why it actually happens. Happens if you, for example, mix or the three primaries. I would like to add a little note here. Want to talk about math or muddy colors. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. There are some very useful neutrals that I've made mixing all three primaries. But for the sake of destination for now, I will call it map. Let's mix the three primaries and see what we get. Let's get one of the yellows, so transparent yellow. And every time you mix different primaries, so instead of transparent yellow, you use another yellow. This is the warm maybe use a cool yellow. You might get different results with your nail truths because this, we're calling it mud, but it's a neutral color is it can be a gray or a black, even a brown. Sometimes. I'm going to put a little more yellow. Then we need to add the red. So I'm going to add the quinacridone red. We get orange. Then we're going to add a blue. Let's put this one. As you can see. We have a really dark color and let's see, it's kind of a greenish color. We just did such that if we are looking for black, if I put a little bit more red here, we can make, is going to kind of brown now. And maybe we can add more yellow. Now it's gotten lighter brown. So you can play with this. You can make different sort of neutrals, different gray or black. I put too much blue now also is going towards this kind of modality of color. But this is generally what happens when you mix all three primaries. So let's put a bit more red. Going to one of those muddy, kind of purplish color. Let's try now with complimentary colors, are going to try it with 3D mixed colors. The ones that I have here. If we look at the color wheel, complimentary color is the one that sits opposite the color in the color wheel. So the complimentary of yellow, violet, and the complimentary of red, it's green. If I mix. Let's see. Let's pick up a red. Use this one which is activated. Put some red here. The complimentary is green. I'm going to use liked to use hookers green. I have lots of colors, but I have accumulated over the years. Though. Mind this, you don't have to use all these colors. And in fact, I'm just showing you the, you don't need to. Let's pick this green here. If you mix a little bit, it's still kind of reddish. But if I keep mixing the green, then you're gonna start getting darker and darker color. See it's gone kind of brown now. And now we're making mud. Complimentary colors. Mixing will also give you muddy colors, which you might need. You might need this brown. So this is good to know. As I mentioned before, if we mix, sometimes, not always, of course, but if we mix colors of different, like opposite bias. So a warm yellow and a cool red, then we get a murky brownish orange. And if we mix a warm red and the color blue, we get a purple. But this doesn't always happen. In fact, if you mix quinacridone magenta, Let's mix this one. I think actually I did this before. Was this one here, the fringe ultramarine. Then we get a much brighter purple. This is way is so important to know the bias of your paints. In the next lesson, I will show you with a very special color wheel, how to mix vibrant colors and what happens when you don't really keep into account color bias. 9. Let's Keep It Bright!: I have prepared here and a special color wheel, which is not your normal color wheel, like this one. But this one will show you what happens when you mix warm and cool primaries. I have given you a template, something like this. You can download it from your downloads. And in here, I have added some arrows just to show you the direction the color goes, the bias of the colors. So the warm yellow as a bias towards orange and the cool yellow as a bias towards grid. And the same, you have warm red goes towards orange, color red as a bias towards blue and violet. We have the cool blue that goes towards the green side. And the warm blue The goes towards the violet red side. This would give you a visual aid. When you go into mix your colors. You have this new downloads. Also. I'm going to use these currents here for the cool yellow and Winsor lemon for the warm yellow, transparent yellow for the QRadar, quinacridone, magenta, warm red. Quinacridone red, blue and Winsor blue green shade. For the warm blue fringe, ultramarine. However, you don't have to use these exact colors. You can use whatever you have in your paint box. And I've given you all this downloads where I give you a list of other colors that you can use. There are colors from That's the first page from Daniel's meat, Winsor and Newton and Schmidt. You can pick another warm red or cool red, warm yellow, ocher, yellow. It doesn't have to be these colors that I use. I'm going to put also this on your downloads as well with the Winsor and Newton. And then here's Smith colors. So if you have done as meat, you can use these ones. For example, it doesn't have to be exactly the same colors as I use. Let's keep this one a close. All right, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to mix these colors and show you what happens. Both when you use colors which have the same bias, which have different bias, opposite bias. It's a bit like I showed you in this example here. But it's going to be in the form of a color wheel and you're going to have all the mixes here. Then I will take a picture or scan it and put it with your downloads as well. So you can have this, the colors when you downloaded imprinted or look at this game might be a bit different because of screen calibration and all that. And print a calibration, I would advise you or I would advise you to actually do this exercise. And this can be a mini-project part of your bigger project. You can do this color wheel, and you can even do more than one. You can do a smaller color wheel and then try different primaries. For example, you can try it. You can try it with Indian yellow. And then you can try another color wheel with transplant and yellow as a warm yellow and so on. So if you have more than one warm yellow and cool yellow and so on, you can do two or three color wheels and you can have a visual of that color will look like when you mix it. Okay, so enough talking. Let's start mixing the paints. I have here, the cool colors. So they are Winsor Lemon, the quinacridone, magenta, and the Winsor blue. Then this is the green shade. There is a Winsor blue, red shade. So be careful which one you use. The nav, the warm colors. So they transplanted yellow, the quinacridone red, and the French ultramarine. I'm going to put a little bit of this color, CSO, this is the Winsor, lemon, yellow. So I'm gonna put it here. Then we put the warm yellow in here. Then we're cool red. Quinacridone, magenta goes here. Make sure you clean your brush properly between one color and the other. Then we have the warm red. That's the quinacridone, red. Then we have the cold blue, Winsor blue. We put it here. The warm blue fringe autonomy. This one here is the Winsor and Newton fringe ultramarine and it tends to granulate the fringe Newtonian normally tends to graduate. But if you use the Daniel Smith one, granulate a little less than this one. I don't have it at the moment, but that one is a little less granulating. Okay, so let's start mixing. What we can do is we can mix warm red with a warm yellow. And hopefully you will remember that when you mix these two colors which shove a bias towards orange, you would get a bright orange. Pick up some of these. Shall I put it? I put it here. We have a warm red and then a warm yellow. So the transplant it yellow. I use a little bit of scrap paper to check the color. That should be all right. We are warm yellow, warm red, and warm yellow. In this section here. As you can see, it's a nice, rich, bright orange. You can do this in different ways as well. You can have a section where you do this color with less, with a bit of water, so it's less saturated. You can see what it looks like. When it's diluted. That's a nice bright orange, as you can see. Then I'm not going to do the next one next to this. So this colors for mixing will do the warm red. So again, the quicker on red and the cool yellow, the warm red goes towards the orange, but the cool yellow goes towards the green. We're not gonna have as brighter orange as this warm red. I might just leave it there. Actually, I'm going to pick up a little bit more cool yellow, which is the Winsor lemon. With orange actually is not that bad. The difference, It's more obvious when you mix blue and red or yellow and blue. Let's do this one. So warbler them cool yellows. There's not a huge difference because in this orange also we have one of the colors, that is, its tendencies towards orange. Just one color goes the other way. When we use a cool red and a cool yellow, it will be more obvious. Let's leave this for the moment. Leave it to dry. Let's go to another mix. We can mix this one here. We live in one space. So this is a cool yellow and cool blue. That should give us nice bright green. So cool yellow goes towards green. A cube root goes towards green. Yellow. This one. Let's put it here. Cool blue. Gonna pick up a very small amount because this is quite a strong color. Don't be afraid to check your colors before you commit to your final. Well, this is not hugely important work, but this is important still to have a good representation of your colors. Just slightly darker. Let's put this in here. There it goes. So this is a nice, beautiful, bright green. The next one we can do this one. We'll leave that It's a warm yellow and a cool blue. Warm yellow goes towards this side. And a cool blue goes towards this side. One orange and one towards green. This is not gonna be as bright as this one. Hopefully you can see on, on, on camera Albright disease. We said warm yellow and cool blue. Again, this is still not too bad because you have one of the colors with a tendency towards green. The yellow goes towards orange, but the blue goes towards green. You still have that green bias in there. It's not actually about color. If you do use this for painting, they are a bit too bright. You might want to turn them down with a red for somebody with a little tiny bit of red. But just remember, the more red you put you add, the more it will go towards brown. Because you will have the three primaries mixing yellow, blue, and red. I'm just going to carry on this. I'm going to speed it up and then we'll have a look at it and when it's finished. Okay, so the choroid is finished. I put my hand in here, so try not to do that. As you can see, we have some bright colors and some dark colors here. This orange and this orange, they're quite done because they're made with a cool red, which goes towards the core rate, goes towards the blue. With warm yellow. This one goes towards orange. In here, at least there is a little bit of orange bias, but the red is cool. So you get a darker color. This is made with the caret, which goes towards blue and with a cool yellow, which goes towards green. This is quite sort of brownish, orange. While these ones brighter. This is the brighter so well, because it's the warm red. Don't want to put my hand in. The warm red that goes towards orange. Is the warm yellow that goes towards orange. And the same here. So if we have a cool blue that goes towards green, in a cool yellow, we have a really bright green. But if we have a warm blue, so whereas the warm blue here, the warm blue goes towards pollen, read, the warm yellow goes towards orange. As you can see, they're going away from green. And the green is kind of very dull. It's not as bright and the brightest red. In this case. If you just think about the bias, you have a cool red and a warm blue, you'll think coal, coal and warmer opposite. But in that case you need to think about the color. That's why if I say it's important to have a color wheel handy, because the cool red goes towards violet and the warm blue goes towards the violet. So you have a very bright violet. When you do this yourself, you will see how bright it is on camera doesn't really look as bright. On the other side. On the other hand, you have a cool blue that goes towards green, and the warm red that goes towards orange. They both going away from the violet. So cool blue, warm orange, or warm red. You have the dull violet here. This is important to have a list. At the beginning. When you start column mixing. It's really good to have some of these color wheels always video, even if you just print this one that they gave you. But I strongly, strongly advise you to do this color. We're at least one of them depending on how many colors you have available. I would do that with all of your primaries. As I mentioned before. Okay, so in the next lesson I'm going to show you how I do some color cards. Slowly can build up a library of colors. You don't have to do discards all at the same time because it might be a bit of a tedious job to do. But it is important to get, get to know your colors. If you really want to do that, then doing the color cards could be a really good exercise. I will show you that in the next lesson. 10. Swatch It Up!: In this lesson, we're going to do color recipe card. I showed you before this you have some downloads, class downloads for the template for this. You don't have to use this. You can do little squares, you can do whichever way you like. But I gave you this just in case. And there's two versions. There's the light one gives you want to print it straight in your, on your watercolor paper. Basically what I did was I took the same colors I used before for the color wheel. We have the Winsor, lemon. See if I can. The closer the transparent yellow so the cooler warm yellow. Mixed them, the Winsor lemon yellow and mix it with warm red and a cool red. Then the warm yellow, I mix it again with the warm red with a cool red. So they still quinacridone magenta. This one in clinic, we don't read this way. And then the second row is just the same color as the top row, but with added water. So I shorten it with H2O because I'm writing too much on these cards. Then the full strength version and the lighter version. This will give you, again a good overview what happens when you mix colon warm bias colors. As you can see here, for example, in this case, in the color wheel. Me get it. Again. I just mix the colors and you have one version of the color. But in this case, you actually see the yellow and I was adding a little bit of the red each time. And you can see the progression of the color, what it will become. The more you add. This one here, the warm yellow with the cool red, you can see it becomes more and more brown, which you might need if you do for sample landscape. So botanical painting, this is quite good, but even still life, you might need some candidate that I did the same with. The red and blue. You have the warm red and warm and cool blue and the red and the warm and cool blue. So you can see this one is the brightest one. This one is still not too bad because you still have the cool red which goes towards violet, magenta. These ones, again, this is a bit dull because you have the two colors that go with this one the opposite ways. I have. I have this in this format like a book, because I'm going to do quite a few of these. These are called signatures and I will make a little booklet. When a, whenever these finished, there is an haven't done it yet. I haven't put it together yet is because whenever a single pages I can put this on a light box with the template behind. With a light box, I can just trace it. If it's in a little book, then I can't do that anymore. But you're gonna have to do it this way. You can just cut this little rectangles of paper. And you can use hole puncher and you can punch some holes and use a binding rings, for example. You can use a little ribbon and tie it together. You can put it in a binder, ring binder. So maybe you can leave more space on this side and punch the holes here and put it in a ring binder. It's up to you. I like to do it this way so I don't lose these. Gonna put, put them in a little booklet, but you can do it wherever you like. And I left this blank because I'm going to do it with you. So I start by showing slowly I will do it and then I will speed up the video. Here. We have the Winsor lemon, so it's the cool yellow winter level, it's here. These are always the same colors I'll be using in the class. I'm going to pick up a good amount. The first one is just a normal color without anything I did just a Winsor Lemon. Then I will mix this cool yellow with a warm blue, the French ultramarine. What I do is I just put this in here first, in here too. Then I will add the blue here, so that's the normal blue. Nothing I did. You can do more or less of this little circles. You can do squares if you like. And we're going to use the blue in here as well. So I'm gonna put it here as well. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to start adding the French ultramarine Winsor Lemon to make the mix. Let's see, there's some in here. I don't want to add too much straight away. That's good. A little bit of blue. Then fill the second circle. Then paint in my brush. I will dip it in water like this and then put it in my palette. That way, I have a diluted version of this. I usually forget, so try not to do like me. For example, I forgot to put a diluted version of the yellow here, but that's not too bad. I can always do this afterwards. And then what I do is say, just print the brush, pick up a bit more blue and add it to the yellow. Always add a little tiny bit at a time. You can always add a bit more. You can't what? You can add a bit more yellow, but then it's a bit, gets a bit tricky. The next one. And again, I will dip the brush once and then put it on the palette like this. And we have the diluted version. Pick up a bit of blue. Let's see if this is known as trade in here to see if it's different enough, maybe a little bit more blue. We need to see a little bit of difference as well. Going forward. This is one of those green stone is not very bright. Then let's do lighter version. Maybe I've made my life a bit more difficult to doing circles, squares, getting a little bit darker. The last one. Try to keep this blue clean because you will need it again. Rinse your brush before you dip it in the blue. That's how I do these colored cards. I'm going to do diluted versions of the yellow and the blue here. And I will speed up this now because you've seen the process. And then I will show you the final results. As you can see, the cool yellow, Winsor lemon with the cool blue, which go. Towards green. Both of them, given me nice, bright green. I forgot to mention before this is Arches paper. So I wanted to do these cards, although this is expensive paper, I wanted to do this guides in the paper that I normally use for my paintings. Because this will give you, give me an idea of what the color will look like this paper. Because if you see it, let me have a look. This is cool blue and cool yellow, which is this one here. It looks different from any of these colors because this is maybe different dilution with different proportions of green and blue. But this color here, I'm not sure if you can tell the difference on onscreen is nothing like any of these colors here. This is the Canson paper, and it's not a paper that I use for my final paintings. It's a paper that I use for sketching. If you want to know exactly what the color would look like in your final painting, then you should use the paper that you would use for your final painting. I understand this is a bit expensive. Otherwise, you can just use some different paper, but be aware that you will get different results. Depending on the paper you use. Enough about paper. I will carry on with a warm yellow, which is the transparent yellow. I think I will clean my palette, but I just put this here. You can see how a word disease compared to the Winsor Lemon. We put one here which is the same. Then we do the diluted version. This is actually quite relaxing. If you have a Saturday afternoon, they didn't know what to do or in the evening or just a rest day because it's quite well. I find it relaxing. I don't know about what the people, they might find a boring, but to me it's kind of like a meditation. Keep going with this. And then we'll have a look at the end. Okay? All right, So this is complete. This card. As you can see, the warm yellow. Let me get this again. We have the warm yellow and the warm blue. Yellow goes towards orange. The warm blue goes towards red and violet. They both go away from the green and you get a dark green. And then we have a warm yellow and a cool blue. The cobra goes towards the green. So one of the, one of the colors growth towards the green. The other one goes away from the green and we have a dark green, but it's not as dark as this one. With this cards, you really have an excellent visual of what happens when you mix the cool and warm primaries is true for all of them. Every time you need to mix a color. If you see a leaf that is sort of a dark green, then you can take a leaf and put it next to this. You can see it's a dark green, is more close to this one. Then I can use a warm blue and a cool yellow to make agreeing that is similar to the one. This will appeal when you're trying to color match as well. In the next lesson, I will use some dinner going to find some leaves and maybe a petal or a flower. And I will show you how you can use these to match the color. I see you in the next lesson. 11. It's a Match!: Alright, so I've got some samples here of leaves and petals. I have a rose petal. This is from a Zoom flower. This is from, again from the interstitial, and this is from geranium. And the colors here might be a little bit different, but hopefully I can show you how you can use your color cards. I mean, you can do this cards in lots of different ways, but these can give you an indication of the color, at least. Let's start with this. Yellow is generally a difficult color to match. But you can see if you start here, you can see that this, this yellow dislike, sort of brownish yellow is not like this petal. So you're going to need a different type of orange may be a brighter one. If we look at this one here, that is beginning to look more like this petal. So you know, oh, I have this rose, this color looks quite similar. Then I have to mix a Winsor lemon, so a cool yellow with a warm red quinacridone, red. This is how it will help you. This is actually a pretty good match for this petal. Then you have a lighter side on the petal here. And then you can maybe use the diluted version of this. Or maybe you can put more yellow because remember these are just steps by in-between this step and this step, there's lots of other steps. So if you add less red than you can get a yellow that is closer to the center of the petal. That's one. This is in a studio. Again, quite a bright orange. Probably on video might look almost like red. But if you put it next to the red, it's kind of similar to this quinacridone. Red with a little bit of the transparent yellow. But maybe again, you're probably better off with with a cool yellow and a warm red. But you need to do different tests there because it's quite a dark orange. But again, you can get a feel for what sort of color. I think these ones again are probably the best bet for this color. And then for the green. This is quite a bright green. Probably a brighter green like the cool blue here and warm yellow. The absolute bright green, maybe too bright, you can see. And I really actually use this color, although is the brightest color. You don't always want this. I think something around this area, it might be better. And then sometimes you need to turn down the green with a little tiny touch of red. This is only an indication, but again, it will put you in the right direction instead of trying to mix any odd green and then you get something like that which is completely different. Then the geranium. This is quite a darker green. Probably is a bit more difficult. And I think here you will need different view. You need to add some red. Let's try maybe we can have a little bit of a play. The French ultramarine. Transparent yellow. Here there'll be this paper is not the best. If you do it already a bit darker. In the wrong one. It's already better. Then. Maybe we can add a little bit of red. Tone it down. Maybe that's too much red. But it puts you in the right direction. For the green. Then you can play around. Green usually is one of the most difficult colors to match. Because we see green so much around us that they will pick up straightaway if there is something weird about it. It's something between this and this. You keep playing with it, you will get the right green. But then we started with this, with this color chart. Because we can see straight away that is nothing like this green here. This green here. It will give you a good indication of where to start, at least with wasted as my term, paint. I just wanted to show you how to use these cards to match colors. And of course you can take it one step further. And instead of doing just three, to get the right the other way around, instead of doing just three lines you can do or two lines, you can do three. And then you do these two colors, and then you, every time you add a different color. For example, for the green, you can do the green and the new add a little bit of red. Hopefully I'm making sense. If you do this green here, which was this one. Every time you do the green, you add a tiny bit of red, then you can add, you can even do another line again and you can add the cool red and the warm red. I added red here. And it's changing the color. Of course, the more radio ad, the more brown it gets. There you go. But for now, you can start with these. These are already quite good to give you. As you've seen, an indication when you color matching. When you have quite a few of these cards, you have lots of different options. Because depending on which cool and warm color you, you mix, then you might get a slightly different result. 12. Project Option 1 Abstract Painting Lighthouse Silhouette: As a variation for your project, I told you you could, for example, do a little abstract landscape using your column mixes and basically using your knowledge about color mixing now. And maybe using the same colors so that you can have a harmonious painting. Then at the end, I thought maybe doing a little silhouette. If we use a mixed here, the pharyngeal Coumadin with the quinacridone red. We have this sort of blue violet color is going to be in abstract painting. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to wet a little bit the paper first. Then we're going to have like Marin sort of landscape. There's a lighthouse in some rocks here, but it's going to be kind of abstract type of thing. So I don't want you to get too involved in making the perfect landscape is going to be just for fun, just to try out your your color mixes. See what works. I mean, you could do, if you wanted to do a bigger landscape projects, you could do some delay this as a thumbnail and try different variations. We can have something like this for the C. That, and then maybe we can add a bit more red. There is a slight variation there, maybe a bit more. And you get this sort of effect. This is going towards the violet. Now. Some delay that then we can add a bit more blue again. Quite a bit more blue. You can play with watercolors. You can get the API accidents to call them. Then for the sky, it could be something like the evening sky. So I'm going to wet this again because it's drying quite fast with this. So I will expand the color. This is quinacridone red. Again, it's the same colors, quinacridone red and orange, ultramarine, but more red. You can have something like this. And then maybe add a little bit more pharyngeal thymidine to make it a bit darker. And then a bit more. I'm just adding the same color, getting darker color here. And then it's sort of majors into the sea like this. Then we can mix while we wait for this to dry. So here it is, the rocks, but we're going to mix. I like to put colors from the sky and the sea as well. As you can see granulate the French ultramarine. That can be a nice effect for your painting if you like that effect. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to start adding yellow to this. So I'm going to add, let's see, I'm going to put this in here. Just kind of a violet color. The moment might not be enough color, so I'm going to add more blue. You can always mix more, but it's nice to have enough color from the beginning. Then. Going to add some yellow. Here we have a warm red and warm blue. So I'm going to try with a warm yellow, transparent yellow. As you can see, mixer. Quite a darker color, which could be at the horizon. And then let's add more yellow. We're getting to a brown. Add a little bit more because it's sort of brownish color. We need to add a bit more blue and red. Let's get to scrap paper to try it. Getting there. We got quite a dark color now it doesn't have to be exactly black. And we just need to wait for this to dry. We can apply the dark color to do like a silhouette. I'm going to put a line during of this on your downloads so you can download. It will be a little bit different because I sort of I didn't use I didn't trace it. I just did it by hand. Sort of looked at it and try to reproduce it here. But you can do that or you can just use the line drawing and do exactly the same as the line drawing. We're just going to wait a little bit for this to dry and then go back to this again. This side here is I think it's dried enough. What to do? I'm going to start from this side and just going to paint this. I think in my need a little bit of a thicker paint. But we can always go back and do another layer on top. In here is actually quite straight. Like this. Small rocks in there. That this is just for fun, just a little abstract. So it doesn't have to be. Your masterpiece, is just to show you that you can do little painting like this with just three colors. Basically, these are the same colors. You can see the granulating effect from pharyngeal Germany. If you don't like this effect, then try and get a different blue for your mixes. Because this is a bit watery. It was showed the color from underneath, but you can do different layers in here. We can have something like this, Simulating the rocks near, near the sea. This was actually a bit taller, so I'm going to make it a bit taller light that you can choose a different landscape or you don't have to do this if you'd like it. Just up to you. I think this is day as well. So let's do some delay like this, like a little rock where the lighthouses really was a bit too watery. This then we have the Azure Lighthouse here. A little bit. Then I think when this is day, I'm going to do another layer of dark. But you've seen how I did it. So mix the blue shall limits it and mix it. Mix the blue and the red. Make purple. Gonna make it a dark purple. Going to put more blue. To this. I will just add the yellow which was transplant it yellow. So pharyngeal tremor in quinacridone, red and transparent yellow. As soon as you start adding the yellow changes into a dark color, that's kind of brownish. Said that a bit more blue. We have this color here, which is a bit more concentrated, so it looks even darker. This one is still wet. We'll have to wait a little bit to add this. To just add this on top. Okay, So this is dried out now, so I'm going to do another layer. You can see this is much darker, the color is more concentrated. Didn't do enough. You can give it a little bit of a fixture by sort of stippling the brush like this wasn't enough cutter can put a little bit more of this. More towards the brownish. Still gonna add a little bit more blue. Let me get a bit darker. There you go. You can play around with your colors, make a little landscape or something else as well. You can do Sunday like an abstract flowers for example, if you like florals. I'm just going to do another layer here as well. To make it a bit darker and do the silhouette effect. Then we stable. This color here as well. Kind of reminding the rocks in the sea. Alright? So this is just something to play around. And if you think about it, I only used fringe, literally. Quinacridone, red, and yellow. And these are the three. Won't tell us. Digital managers by the yellow. Would this three colors. I made this little landscape. And you can see from the pink purplish color going to darker blue ball and going to something even darker blue that reminds of the sea. You don't need. I don't know. It looks like 12345, maybe 67 colors you don't need so in color, so you just need three. 13. Project Option 2 Abstract Flowers: Another project that you can do if you don't like to do landscape. So you think it's somebody you wouldn't enjoy. You can do an abstract flower composition, for example. Something like not with the orange. So if we want a bright orange, we can use the transparent yellow, which is the warm yellow. I'm going to use this. Just get some edema in the palette. I don't normally use the plastic palette. I don't really like it, but my other pallets are in use at the moment. I have to use this one. They get stained. As you can see, I don't really like this behavior here. We have the just piling yellow. We can adjust that like a flower with this. So let's see something, right that somebody like really loose abstract. You don't have to worry too much about the outcome of this. It just for fun in play. Then maybe I can add another one of these here. To do it a little bit smaller. I'm just sort of pushing the brush and lifting it up. Then I will add a little bit of the warm red so the clinic we don't read. I think it will need a bit more color. I'm gonna get some more yellow. This is a bit darker version. Maybe. I'll put a little bit more, Something like that. Then a lot more red, smaller one here. Then once it's dry, you can add different things as well. Like details for sample. Bit more red. Maybe a bigger flower here. Like this. Then some more red. Don't know the flower here. Lose his symbol. It's relaxing. It will show you where you can achieve. We just a couple of colors. Let's get a bit more. Yellow flower down here. Maybe I'll add a bit more yellow small flower here. Then if you wanted to this you can add some leaves. You can look at your grades and see which one you would like to add something. We just spent a yellow maybe. So we have the same yellow. So we could do this is too bright. So maybe this one they transport it yellow and Winsor, blue, green shade. Let's get a bit of a bit more transparent, yellow. A bit of Windsor, blue. It's quite bright, but this is just something for fun. Something like that. You can do little leaves. The what I do is I just touched the page, press and then lift the brush. If you like the effect, you can touch the color as well. Sometimes they just mix. If it's still width. Let's put one here. Another one here. Something like this, just for fun and play. And you can see it's quite ammonias because you're using the same colors. Screwed up points to this little leaf. Leaf here. More one here. This is just relaxing as well. These are two examples of projects that you can do. You can, for example, if I take a bit more of the red, make it a bit darker. I can add little details here. Whereas with they will expand in here will be a different effect because this is dry already. And of course you can use different media as well. You can wait until it's dry and use ink or something else and just make a different effects there. Okay, so here we have the two different projects that you can do. You can do something much more complex if you want more detailed. But if you just want to try out your color mixes, see how they look together, our ammonias there. Then you don't need to worry about something too complicated. You can do some delay this and then let's see if I can take these off now is not dry yet. You should wait until this day. But I just wanted to show you what it looks like. If you do some delay this actually, you could use it as a card, a birthday card or Mother's Day or something like that. Nice little current. Of course you have to do it. Should've been nothing here, so you can fold it and actually have something similar that I did before. So some delay and then it's folded and you can open it and you can write your message here. You can write from such and such at the back. So just playing there, but it's nice to do some killer that every now and then. I hope you have enjoyed this and I can't wait to see your projects. 14. Final Thoughts and Next Steps: Congratulations on completing the class. I really enjoyed sharing my knowledge on mixing. I hope you have learned something useful, some music for information and skills that will improve your column mixing. Avoid your frustrating moments in future. Your next step is to complete the project for this class. If you don't want to do all of them, at least some of them would be good for you. And make those very useful color codes that can be collected together into a column mixing recipe book. And you can use it for future reference anytime you paint. I would really love it if you posted your project in the project gallery. So I can see your cutoffs. What's his cut? And hopefully some fun abstract class. Please remember to hit the Follow button here on Skillshare so that you can be notified straight away when they post a new class. You can also check out my profile for more classes. If you want to keep in touch, you can find me on Instagram at catechol antibiotics. And you can also check out my website, category.com. Thanks again for taking the class and I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next class. Bye.