Mix Beautiful Neutrals With Watercolors

1. Class Introduction: People often call neutral colors muddy colors, but I don't like to call them that. I think neutrals can be beautiful. And we do need them when we're painting. Maybe a botanical painting or a landscape, or a still-life. So if you've taken my previous class, how to mix luminous watercolors, you know that there are warm and cool colors and how to find the color bias of the primary colors. And how to use that information to mix secondary colors that can be bright or muted. In this follow-up class, we will dive a bit deeper into how to mix warm and cool primaries to obtain beautiful neutrals, which can be just not black or brown or gray, but also some shades of green and purple or very dark orange and blue. By the way, you don't need to take the other class to do this class. But it might help you to clarify certain information I give you during this class. So first I will explain what neutral colors are and why they happen. Then I will talk about botanical gray or the marketing mix. And I will tell you, I will explain you what it is and how to use it. I will explain how to do the color cards and give you some options to do them in different ways. For example, from a simpler version or to a more complex version. We will then make the cards and compare the colors obtained with sharp bold colors. I will even show you how to reproduce some of the ready mixed colors. So you don't have to purchase dozens of colors. You can just make your own. And then at the end, we will dive into a fun project. I will give you three different examples of how to use neutral colors. And as a bonus, I have added a speedup video with three fiber examples of small abstract paintings. Then you can do with neutrals. I designed this class to teach you not only how to mix beautiful, transparent neutrals, but also to show you how they can be used, whether you are an artist or a surface pattern designer, this class can be really useful to you. This class is for beginners, but you may find useful information even if you've been painting for a little while. By the end of this class, you will have built a library of neutral colors. And you will have the knowledge to be able to mix any new tools you wish. So if you're ready, let's get started. 2. Materials: You will need many materials for this class. I think I got everything in here. You will need some paint. And if you watched my previous class, you will know that we only need six paints. Although if you have attention for details, you will see that I actually have seven paints here. And this is because I use, so first of all, I use a warm and a cool version for each primary. So a warm and a cool yellow, red, and blue. However, I have been using French Ultramarine, a warm blue, but this particular color tends to granulate. So I actually have done a different version of the mixing with this color here, which is a Winsor blue, red shade. Maybe I'll put it here so you can see it doesn't granulate the French ultramarine. And I will show you the difference. So I have seven, but you just need a warm and cool version of the three primaries and you will be fine. And it doesn't have to be exactly what I'm using. I will give it the list of these, but you can use whatever you have available as long as it's a warm and cool version of your primaries. And I will strongly advise you if you haven't yet to watch my previous class on mixing luminous colors because I go into quite a bit of detail about mixing warm and cool colors. Then you will need some paper. I have here and this one, which is the Canson acquittal. However, I do strongly advise you to do the colored cards with the paper that you normally use for your painting. And it might seem a bit of an expensive exercise. I have done mine with Arches paper, which is these ones here. And I've made this, which sort of, these are pages which I'm going to bind into a little booklet. But at the moment it's easier for me to work when they are pages like this instead of a booklet. Now we bind them at the end. But I'm using arches because that was my studio cat going after the beds. Because I chose is the paper that I normally use for my painting. So that way I will know exactly what the color would look like because these colors change according to the paper that you're using. So the final color that you see on the paper will be different if you use IHS, if you use canceling or if you use something else. So I would advise you to use your paper that you use for your final product, the final paintings. Then you will, you will need some scissors if you want to make the cards, the paper. To make the template. The template will be something very similar to this one, which is what I used for my previous class. Of course, you can do little squares or you can just take your brush and do a little bit of a sort of coloring, something like a square. I like to do this little dots because they look quite nice. But that's just me. But anyway, if you want to do it like that, I put this in your Download and there will be a version which is much more life lighter. Don't know if you can see it. And this you can print directly on your watercolor paper if your printer allows it. And so you don't have to actually do it. Otherwise, I normally take a light box. I put this on the light box and I use a circle template. If you have this. Sometime later, I use the 14, which is like 40 millimeters. And I put my paper on top of the template and it will shine through. And then you just use your, your circle template and you just do the circles. There's pretty simple to do that way. But as I said, you can do your template whichever way you like. It makes sense for you and you enjoy doing it. What else you would need? Some pencils and erasers. So I have a mechanical pencil, which is quite good. You don't have to keep sharpening it. But if you don't have to worry, if you don't like and you can use a normal pencil. And I have a tumble racer, which is quite good for small details or just a normal eraser. Nothing fancy there. You will need brushes and some some kitchen towel to dry your brush. And just some you can use any color that you like. Well, it should be cotton is better. Because all the other ones might give you some little fluff and things. For the brushes. I've been using. This one which is from the brush set. This is the number two, but you really can use any brush or two that would be big enough for your template. This was quite a good sites. It doesn't have to be any fancy brush. You can use a synthetic brush, anything that you haven't handy. This is an old brush for picking the color and mixing the colors. As you can see, it's especially as good days. That's why I use it for that reason. Because otherwise you're good brushes will be damaged by mixing, picking up the color and mixing it. You might need a ruler, just any old ruler who do. What else? A palette for mixing. Again, it doesn't have to be this title palette. It can be any. I do prefer to the porcelain palettes because they don't stain. But it can be any palette that you have handy. And then you will need some containers for water. I usually have two. These are just so much jam containers. One is for clean water, one is for washing your brush. And I will add this in your downloads as well. I add this in my previous class as well. It gives you some sort of different options for your colors. Winsor Newton, Daniel Smith, and spring k. And these are different, cool and warm. Yellow, red, and blue. If you don't have the colors that I have, you can have a look here and see which colors maybe you can use instead. And I think that's everything covered as far as materials. And we can move on to the next lesson. 3. Project: For this class, I decided we could do two different projects. So you can do both of them or just one. So one of the projects is to make colored cards like this ones. So you can have a little library of swatches. And you can do a simplified version or a full version like, like mine, which I warmly recommend by the way. For project tool, you can paint a small abstract painting with watercolors, and it can be something like that, or a flower, for example. So something that you enjoy painting. You can find templates for your color codes and the examples of the projects in the downloads. And you can find a link to your downloads in the description and project section. 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 and be sure to share your project in the project section. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'm here for you. 4. Introduction To Neutral Colors: Before we dive into mixing neutrals, I just wanted to show you, well, first of all, what happens when we mix the three primaries. So if I'm going to mix, for example, a quinacridone magenta, which is one of the primaries. Take a bit of that. And then I add a little bit of blue. So let's see if we add this Winsor blue green shade. Now this is the red shade. So we had a bit of a blue and we end up with a violet at the moment. Because we mixed the red and the blue. And then the other primary would be the yellow. So I'm going to add the Winsor Lemon. Add a little bit at a time. Not too much. And as you can see, this is changing and it's becoming what some people call them, colon muddy color, eye color, neutral. It's a kind of black, gray color. So this is a bit diluted, but That's what happens when you mix all the three primaries. I also wanted to go back a little bit to secondary and tertiary colors. I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but it's just to have a clear understanding. So the secondary colors are obtained by mixing the two, the primaries. So the orange, you mix the red and the yellow, and the violet, you mix the red and blue and the green new mix the yellow and the blue. And of course this is a little bit more complicated than that. And I talk about this in my previous class about color mixing. But for now, this is enough. Then if you want a tertiary color, you mix a primary, a secondary. So you have red and orange, yellow, red, orange, blue, and violet, blue-violet, and so on. So why is this important? Because we need to know what pigments we have in our mix and how many pigments. If you have an orange, Let's say you have already mixed orange. This one is quite nice. It's a transparent orange from, I can't remember if it's shaming can maybe are all vain. But anyway, this is a nice orange. So we have this orange here. And then we want to maybe make it darker. So usually they say to make some colors darker, you need to add the complimentary color, which is the color that is directly in front of the color in the color wheel. So in this case we need to add blue. So we take some blue and we add it and we get mud. And that's because, well, I could have had a little bit less, of course. But if you try to make orange darker with blue, in orange, orange is a secondary color. You have red and yellow. Make orange. And blue is another primary. So you have red, yellow, and blue, which is the one. You end up having the three primaries in the mix. But because this is a premix colors, you have different pigments, so you end up with a muddy color which is horrible. And you get frustrated. Because how can you make this darker without making a muddy color? Something that I like to do actually is to if I have an orange color. So let's pick up a bit more of this. Maybe with some water. To make it darker. I tend to add the color that is an analogous color. So if I have orange, the analogous colors are the ones that are close to that color on the same side. So I could add a little bit of red. For example. Let's say we add payment in carmine. Maybe a bit more. As you can see, is making it darker. So I will show you what this looks like. Maybe a DOD is this one here, but let's put it closer. This is a bit darker. And then you can add a bit more. And that way it stays in the orange rail, but it's darker than you used to be. Without making mud. Don't always use the complimentary color mix. The other one darker is the same we read, if we add green to red, is the same thing because green is yellow and blue. And if we add yellow, blue, and red, again, we have the all three colors and we get a neutral black or gray or something like that. That's why it's important to know about secondary and tertiary colors. That's why it's important to know what pigments go into your mix. And sometimes you have pigments that have already like three or four. You have pains that you have, that they have three or four pigments in them. If you have all these pigments already and then you add something else, you end up with four or five pigments in your mixed colors and you might end up with a muddy color and you don't know why that happened, but it's because, because of too many pigments in your mix. Another thing you can use to darken a color any works especially well for reds and greens, is a darkening mix. And we'll talk about this in a different lesson, but it's quite a good color to make your reds and greens darker. But it doesn't really change the starting color too much. So it doesn't give you a different shape, for example, of the color. So I'm going to talk about this more in the next lesson. 5. Botanical Grey: In this lesson, we're going to talk to you about the botanical gray or darkening mix. I mean, I call these the same mix, but depending how you use it, I call it either the marketing mix or botanical gray. And I'm going to explain. So this is a very useful mix if you want to paint white flowers, for example. But I suppose you can use it for white objects to some artists like Key West, for example, like to use this color as a, as an underpainting is book here. And there'll be told to these books, but they're quite nice to have in your library. To paint. Start painting an underpainting of the shadows with this sort of botanical gray mix that you want to call it. Then after that, we'll start adding color to green and then you would add the yellow and so on. However, I don't really like to do paintings like this, especially where the yellow is involved, because for me they become a little bit done. But it's a technique. If you like it, there's nothing wrong with it. And I think it works well with actually dark leaves. But I do love this color to paint white flowers. Because in this case, when we paint white flowers, we actually paint the shadow, the petals. So if we want to use it this way though, this makes, we need to add a fourth color because the mix is made with the three primaries. Again, but when using it for white flowers, It's always nice to add another color. For example, I can show you a painting that I did over a lithium plus. In here. See the best way to show you the flowers were white, but hopefully shows in the camera. I added a little bit of green color, diluted mix to show, especially in the buds which are a little bit more green. But to show that there is some green sort of reflection in the white petals. And this depends on your flower. So it might have a blue reflection or a pink refraction. So it's nice to, I have a watered down version of your document. Make sure your botanical grain this case I call it, and then make it very watery and then add that tiny little bit of color. You can have this sort of reflection because the petals are never completely white. If you look at it. If you take a white flower and observe it, is never completely white, I would strongly advise you against using Payne's gray or Davies gray or what is their neutral neutral tint or God forbid. So I do have this colors because a long time ago I bought them. But I don't use them anymore because they they are opaque colors. So this is taking the wrong word. So let me see. Payne's gray is this one. And this is quite watered down, but it is an opaque color. And when it dies, it makes you, you're the planes a bit dark and don't have the neutral tint as well. I think it's this one. And you can see, yes, it's a kind of a black color and if you water it down, it gives you a gray. But it does have a slightly blue tinge to it anyway. And it is, again is opaque and it makes, everything is dull and not very nice. So try to make your own dark black you're on that makes your own botanical gray, if you can, because it's much better end this colors that are used, they're all transparent. So I'm going to show you how I do it. I use Winsor blue, green shade, which is this one here. And then I add quinacridone magenta. Again like before we're making a paper. So we start with a purple, sort of more or less dark color and then you can adjust it, of course. And then I will add Winsor yellow, which is this one here. Probably is too much, but let's see. Always add a little bit at a time. Oh, no, I think it was occasionally. It's still kind of purple. Let's add a bit more, starting to change. And I'm not sure you can see this probably is it's got a red tinge to it. So I usually adjusted a little bit at a time. You'd like small amounts of the colors so that it shouldn't really have any tendency to any particular color. So it shouldn't have a tendency to red to blue to yellow. And I think this one is actually pretty good. So you see, I added a little tiny bit of blue to it. And now we have this color, which if you use it this way, you can add it to red. Maybe I can add a little bit to this color, which was the one there. Let's see if it works. Not too much, because you can always add a bit more, but you can ruin a color. This was starting to dry, is quite hot today in here. As you can see, add a little bit and it's already starting to be a little bit darker. So you can use it to darken red and green. You see that was the starting color and this is the darker color. Or if you diluted. So put some water in here. Take a little bit. For white flowers, you need to dilute it quite a lot because otherwise you will end up with gray flowers. So dilute it right down. Let's see. Well, I'll leave it like that because otherwise you wouldn't be able to see it and this paper is not the best, but I just had it handy and I'm using this. And also when you denote it like this, you can see if there are tendency to red, blue, or yellow a bit more than when it's darker. So when you dilute it like this, then you add a little bit of washer, we add a little bit of green. Maybe. So let's see. I'm just going to pick up a ready-made green, just to show you a little bit of Hooker's green, maybe. So now it's got a little bit of a green tinge. Going to put it next to this one. Hopefully you can see this camera. I'm not sure if you can, but it's going a little bit more green. And this will help you give the reflection to your petals, to your white petals. And you can add some pink. Otherwise, I'm going to make it a little bit more here. Could have done it there. Let's see. It's nice and light. And let's add a pinkish color working at this one here. This is a cobalt violet, which you sometimes have in flowers. And that way is giving it a pinkish tinge to it. Probably won't see it very well on camera, but I advise you to play with this, do it yourself, and then have a look. So this is quite dark, but just to show you that it's gone a little bit of friction of pink. And this sort of helps you with the refraction I was telling you about. So maybe I can use this paper here which are used for other similar things is Canson paper. And hopefully you can see it a bit better, which is good, uh, a pinkish tinge to it. Okay, so that's the botanical gray and the marketing mix. The marketing mix is really something that I advise you to use. Because as you could see, it makes the color darker, but it doesn't really change. The fact that that is orange instead of like this then made it brown. So in the next lesson I'm going to talk a little bit about how we're going to make these swatches. So I just wanted to explain to you how it works and make everything clear. Because if you just jump into making, this might be a little bit confusing as to why we work in this case. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. Introduction To Color Cards: When you mixing neutrals, you get a different result according to your starting color. Normally, I start by mixing blue and red like I did before in the previous lesson. And make a violet because you need much less yellow and add it to the mix to neutral, then you need the other two colors. You've watched my peers classroom mixing luminous colors. You will know that I used one warm and cool version of each primary, which I have here. And I will use the same colors here. But there is a little addition as well, which I explain in a minute. So the colors that I use, the warm colors are quinacridone red, which is this one here. And then French ultramarine, which is this one here, and transparent yellow. So these are the warm colors and cool colors. We have Winsor, yellow, Winsor blue, green shade, and quinacridone magenta. Now, I added this color in this class because fringe ultramarine is a nice color, but it tends to granulate. So I did the next sort of color card to show you what happens when you use a calendar doesn't really granulate the match, which is Windsor blue, red shade, which is also a warm color. So we can substitute it for French, italian. You might think that with all these colors, even just the six, you will have a huge amount of color combinations and a huge amount of cards to make. But it's not actually like that. The colors that we have, a cool blue and a cool red, for example. To these colors, we can add either a cooler yellow or a warm yellow. And then we have a warm blue and a cool red. And then again we can add a yellow or a warm yellow. And then we have a cool blue and a warm red. Again, mixed. Go to either cooler yellow or warm yellow. And then we have a warm blue and a warm red, which we can make either with a cool yellow or a warm yellow. And these actually are all the mixes that we need. Eight mixes. Because if we, let's say we want to start with a yellow, so you might think, okay, but what if we start by mixing yellow color? So we have a cool yellow, for example, plus coke blow to which we can add either a red or a cool red. But this, actually this mix, we already have it, both of them because it cool yellow, cool blue, and a warm red. Is this one with a cool yellow. So we have that mix here. And the cool blue and a cool red is this one. With a cool yellow is this one. So we have the mix here. So as you can see, you don't need to do any more mixes. We have everything in here in these eight different mixes. The only thing that might complicate things is this. The colors that you obtain change according to the type of violet that you make. At the beginning, I'm going to show you with the cards that I already made and I'm going to make one. Would you? So you can see how I do it. So let's say we start with the, I call it and neutral violet because it's a pilot that doesn't have too much of a tendency towards either blue or red. So we have a cool blue and a cool red. We make this sort of neutral violet and we add the cool yellow and the warm yellow, and we get these colors. However, if you want to take things further because you can stop there, if you want to, you don't have to do all these color codes like I did. You can just do the basic combination and that's it. But if you want to take it further, you can start with violet, which has more blue than red. So this is the same cold brew and cool red. But I added way more blue, maybe too much blue. But there's more blue than red. And you get different colors when you have your mixes, when you add your warm and cool yellow, if you do the safe, use the same colors, but you start with way more red. So you have a cool red and a cool blue steel like the previous ones, but you add way more red. So as you can see, this is much more read as a tendency to more red. This one was more blue. This one here. When you start with more red, then you get different colors. When you add you cool yellow and warm yellow. So you have more blue. We have a tendency to green. Towards the end. If you have more red, you have a tendency to brown. It is a good exercise to do. Understand that you have lots of cards to make if you do it that way. But this is not a huge amount. After all. This is the one we're going to make together. So as you can see, actually, this last one is the one that I made with the other blue. So really it's only this 123456 cards. So it's not that huge amount, but when you finish, you will have a color library of neutrals, which is incredible because it shows you a huge amount of colors that you can have with the, with the difference that it mixes and we really six colors. The next thing you need to do is get your template ready. You can, as I said, you can use mine or you can use different way to do it. You can have little squares that you just fill in, or you can just take the brush, dip it in your color and just do something like that. And the yellow in a row of colors like this. It doesn't have to be complicated and I want you to, not to stress at all. I want you to enjoy this process because I actually find it quite relaxing. Day your paper ready, your templates, your paints. Because next thing we're gonna do is actually some painting and some color mixing. So a seal in the next lesson. 7. Let's Make the Color Cards: We are finally going to start painting and do our color cards. So here I've started doing this section with the warm blue and a warm red. So we have this violet which is not quite as brilliant as other violets. And that's because of the nature of the colors. If you watch my previous class, you would an in-depth explanation of why this happens. But as you can see, well, this wasn't probably quite as neutral as I wanted it to be because we get a tendency to green when we add yellow. And I just wanted to tell you, don't stress too much about making this perfect. The perfect neutral, the periphery to read through the perfect blue violet. Just do the exercise, try to do as close as possible and mix that resembles a sort of violated that doesn't have too much tendency to either color. And the violet that is more tendency to read and one more tended to blue. But don't stress about it. Because after all, every time you mix a color, it will be different. If I mix this again, it will be different from this. So don't worry too much. What I'm going to do now is the same colors. So the warm blue is a French ultramarine in this case, and warm red is quinacridone red. I usually write them the side here so I know which colors I've used because otherwise, God knows what colors I've been using. And I'm going to do the mix. So one blue is French ultramarine, which is this one here. And the first mix I'm going to use one of these which has got bigger whales because I need to make enough color to do the different mixes here. As you can see, a good amount of blue in my, well, then I'm going to add maybe a little bit more. Then I'm going to add the red. The warm red is quinacridone red. This should be more blue than red. I'm going to add this a little bit at a time. To make a violet the dataset that has a tendency to blue. This is still probably too blue. I'll have some scrap paper here to taste it. Probably not too bad. Maybe a bit more blue. Okay, I think that's fine. Then what I do is I divide it into two smaller wells. So just pick it up with a brush. And it doesn't have to be this small whales. You can divide it into two other whales. It's just that this makes it easier for me to see how much color F. And then I'm going to pick up some cool yellow and warm yellow. So make sure you wash your brush quite well. Clean it. And then let's get some Winsor, Lemon. The cool yellow. We can always add a bit more to this one, but just put a little bit here for now. I'm going to use a watered-down version as well. Then we're going to be kept the warm yellow, which is the transparent yellow. So what I do, first thing I do is to put my vision of the starting violet in here. If we can pick some up from here. Maybe doing circles wasn't the best idea is not as easy as the squares to fill in. I do like the end results. Then I'm just going to pick some from here. And here. Then I usually add a watered down version of the color. This is because it lets you see the color even a bit better. You have a vision that if you need a lighter color, you can see what it looks like when it's lighter. So I always add a lighter color. Okay, so that's our starting color. And then on the other side, I will add the cool yellow. Since I have on my brush, I can add it here as well. Just be careful if you do this. You don't put your hand underneath like I normally do. And then we'll add the watered-down version of the cool yellow here. And then the same thing with the warm yellow. All right, so we're ready to start. And what I'll do is I add a little by the tie at the time that the yellow. So we start with a cool yellow to the initial mix. Pick up a little bit, and that's through D2. And I add it. Then mix it is up to you how many steps you do as well. So this is 123456. Different steps. You can have more. I wouldn't advise you to have less because this way you can see the progression of the color. As you add the yellow. You can add, you can have more steps. If you want an ad where we do amounts of yellow everytime. See if I can do this without putting my hand in wet paint. This is not hugely different from the beginning, beginning color, but it's a little bit darker already because I've added the yellow. Then what I do in this case is put this here so I can show you. I dip the brush once and then brush it on this side, once or twice. And then use this watered-down version to do this dot here underneath. Oops, I think I went outside of the dots. And if you have too much on your brush and just brush it on the paper, like so, then you can carry on. And then rinse your brush, pick up some more yellow and add a bit more in here. If you're not sure what color is it is forming because it's quite dark in there. You can always use your scrap paper in check. So it's going a bit darker, so it's okay, I can put it in the next dot here. There's some fluffy now, as you can see, is going a bit darker already. And we haven't added that much yellow. So always be very gentle and careful when you add the yellow to your mix because it goes back quite fast. And again, I'm just going to dip the brush on the side like that and use that for my diluted version. As you can see, the fringe ultramarine tends to granulate. That's why I think I'm going to move more to use the Winsor blue, red shade instead of this. So let's pick up some more yellow. Then we do the diluted patient. More yellow. I'm going to be a bit more just to see the change. And it's probably going to, as you can see, a little bit green, a bit of a dark green. But sometimes this actually can be useful if you're doing certain particular leaves. So I'm landscape can just pick up quite a good amount of yellow. Now, I only go to two spaces left. So I want to see what happens when add more and more yellow. Let's add last year or might just pick up a bit more from here. Let's make it more yellow, or in this case more green. It's easy to work, at least for me from this side, going from the inside. So that's the first one done with a violet, which has a tendency to blue and the cool yellow. And as you can see, it goes towards green. In this case because we have more blue in the mix. And now we can add our warm yellow to it. 8. Color Cards Second Part: Let's start with a small amount. So this is only slightly darker. Let's add a bit more. This one with a warm yellow tends to be more like a black. With a cool yellow. Now is starting to turn green. Already. Know if you can tell from the video, but it's got a little bit of a green tinge because we're adding more and more yellow. Okay, so the last two going to add quite a bit of yellow. Now, just to see the difference. As you can see, we have a sort of olive green, almost. The last one is going to add the yellow that I have here. Alright, so as you can see, we have this progression from a blue violet to sort of almost gray black, and then progressing to a tone down green. There is a difference, is not huge, but there's a difference if you use a cool yellow or a warm yellow. And you can see that with the other colors as well. So let's see somewhere that is more prominent, maybe. Especially in here, for example, this tends towards the green a bit more and this is sort of a warmer green. And here we have, this tends to be a little bit darker and this tend to be a little bit brighter. But it's not a huge difference, but there is a difference whether you use cool and warm yellow. Because the difference is not that big. As I said before, you can do this. We just want Beijing or the yellow, you pick one. For example, we say, I'm just going to use the cool yellow and just change the red and the blue, the imbalance and all that. But if you do the entire exercise, it will really help you even more. So I'm going to do this one now, which is more warm red and warm blue. And I'm going to speed up the process because you've seen how I do it. So it's not that boring for you to watch. Because this is, should be a violet with a tendency to read because we have more red than blue, then that was a blue violet. I think this should be alright for the red violet. So I'm going to do to use this one and add the yellow like I did before. So I'm going to separate it again into two wells. And as I did before, I'm going to paint the first dot with the initial color. When you do this color, it shouldn't be too watery and it shouldn't be too thick either. Medium consistency is quite good. Because if it's too watery, you won't see much material difference when you add it. And then I'm going to do the same process or the little bit of time. The cool yellow to the first part and the warm yellow to the other one. And fill in this. Okay, So this is the final cut. I just looked at some water. As you can see, when is a violet with a tendency to read, we get browns. So we tend to get more brown color. And this one is actually quite nice and it can be very useful if you're drawing, if you're printing botanicals or, or even these four landscapes, because not all gain is a bright, shiny green. Alright, so this is how you make your cards. And I really hope you will have fun making these cuts. And I can't wait to see your version of this color cards. 9. Color Comparison: One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the difference. For example, when you use a granulating blue, such as French ultramarine, like in this case, for example, you can see that it's sort of cannulate and you can see the effect that it has on your mixes. And then when you use instead, a blue doesn't granulate. So in this case, I used the Windsor blue, red shade for the warm blue instead of French ultramarine. You can see that the color doesn't regulate the ones. Not the same effect as in this one. The color is much smoother. So that's why I'm probably going to move to use that color more the Windsor blue, red shade than the French ultramarine. Because I don't really like people search and seek out this effect. So I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying that for my style of painting, I probably going to avoid using this color. There's another thing I wanted to show you. These are some cards I did from the Daniel Smith swatch cards. So you can purchase this type of carrots. Here, there's a little dot of color. And where you can do is I just would append, so I just made a grid and the same number as the colors that I have here. And then I just took a little bit of color and switched it in here. So I have basically real Swatch palette instead of having the printed one. So I know exactly what the color would look like if I buy it. And with these ones, you can actually see that some of these colors look like some of these colors. So you don't have to actually buy all of the veins here. You can make it yourself. So for example, there was an olive green here. This olive green here, that looks like a green that we made before. If I can find, it. Looks a bit like this, this color here, I can put it very, very close, but as you can see, they look similar. And then there is another collapse. This I can't pronounce it properly, but it's not thermite Maroon, which is, let's see, it was a cool red and one blue. This one here with a warm yellow. And as you can see, it's very close to these colors here. So if you want something like that, you can adjust these colors because as I said, you can add small amounts of the blue, the red, and the yellow, and then you can move it to different directions. So that color is very similar to this one. And also, I have some made this little swatch cards with my Winsor and Newton colors. So I have them for each color that I own basically. So there's different ones for the yellows weights and so on. Blue and green. I have here. So there's the burnt umber, which looks a bit, I think it might be. This color is a bit like the burnt umber, as you can see here, when he's a little bit diluted. So it's not too different. And I have the row amber, which could be a bit like this color here. So as you can see, you can make your own colors without having to buy hundreds of colors. Pre-mixed ones. And some of these guys, I mean, the raw umber and they bent on, but I actually have them because sometimes I use them, mix them with other colors. But if it's a calendar you don't use very often. I knew you like and then you can just make it yourself. I will show you in the next lesson how to recreate some of these colors so that you don't have to buy all the paints. You can just make them yourself if you prefer to. Okay, So I see you in the next lesson. 10. Make Your Own Colors: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to reproduce some of the colors that you can find ready mixed. For example, Payne's gray or hookers green or sepia. So for the Payne's gray, you can do this in different ways. For some people. If we mix a warm red and a cool blues. So let's say Quinacridone, Red. Take somebody's and they cool blue, so Winsor blue, green shade. And then we add a little bit of transparent yellow, starting to be a color which is similar to the Payne's gray. So let me get the current. So if we add a little bit more blue, like this, similar to neutral tint. But then if we add probably a little tiny bit more blue, it will become more similar to Payne's gray. So as you can see, you can do this neutral colors yourself and these colors are all transparent. So instead of being this is opaque, the neutral tint and semi-opaque. It's a transparent color. Show you with them shop bought color. So the neutral tint is this one. And it can be quite opaque. And the Payne's gray is this one. And this is semi-opaque. So for the Payne's gray, we probably need to add a bit more blue to our mix. But the neutral tint is pretty similar. But this is transparent. And then we can do something like k. I'm hookers green for samples. So for this one, we can use the Winsor blue, green shade, which is still this one. And then we can add the new gamboge, which is this one here. It's all a matter of adding color a little bit at the time. So that's my version of the Hooker's green. And then let's get this sharp boats version, which is, I think it's moved. So it's this one here. It should be on number three. This is a bit more brilliant, but we can adjust this color as opposed with a bit more for sample, more yellow. With a bit more yellow, it becomes a little bit more close to this color here. So that's another one. And then the sepia color. So that's the premixed sepia, which is also, if I remember, well, opaque. Yes, it's opaque. I usually write, in this world this card is a bit messed up with a spill, some water in it, but I, I write the name. And also, if it's opaque or semi-opaque with a little squares. A full square is usually opaque. And then we can make a cool blue and a cool yellow and a cool red. So cool blue is still this one. They went so blue, green shade. And then we're cool red, which is the magenta, quinacridone magenta. And as before, I usually try to get a violet before adding the yellow. But then again, it depends what color you try to make this a, if I let see, we are the cool yellow, so the Winsor lemon. Probably we need more red in this mix, but we'll have a look. So this is going towards green. If we add more red, It's all a matter of playing with the colors. We're going towards. Brown, maybe added a bit too much red. But you can see by playing without much, you add two of each color. You can get to you sort of close to the shop, both colors. And the good thing is that these are transparent. It might take awhile to get this right. And I have a mixed this for awhile. So when you do it all the time, this one is getting closer to our sepia color. It's not exactly the same, but it's getting quite close. But it's all a matter of keep trying. Added the colors a little at the time. And then you can recreate these colors which you don't need to, to buy. Let's see if we can do a viridian. Not sure I have actually viridian already made already mixed. I don't tend to have too many greens, but it's quite a bright green. So we can use fallow turquoise for this, which I have a little tube here. I'm just gonna put a little bit there. We have fellow turquoise and Winsor lemon. Actually it's been so yellow. And this is quite close to the median color. I actually have an example here from the cards I showed you before. So that's the viridian. And this is the one I mixed. So it's not too far off. Again, it's all a matter of playing with your colors and just add a little bit of color at a time. And then you can make these colors too. Okay, so I just wanted to show you you can do so many colors with just this fuel starting pains. And I hope you will do this color cards. And I'm sure you will really benefit from doing this exercise. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how you can actually use your neutral colors. So we're gonna do a little project and we're going to have some fun with this neutral colors, as See you in the next lesson. 11. Introduction To The Project: Your project for this class can be divided into two, for example. So you can do both of these projects. So you can do just one if you'd like. But one project would be to do this, these cards here. So your color cards, and you can choose to do, as I mentioned before, just with one yellow, just with the so-called neutral violet. And choose one yellow, the violet and the two yellows. Or you can do like I did. You can do all the different combinations I showed you before with the different, would it to different yellows. You can do this sort of cards like this. So that's one project that you can do and post in the project section. Then, for example, there's something else a little bit more fun that you can do. And it's something like a, an abstract little painting with your neutrals, which can be quite nice. So if you choose some of the colors that go well together from here, so I've done that here. I've mixed these colors. Here. Is a warm red, a warm blue, and a warm yellow. Quinacridone, red, winter blue-green shade and transparent yellow. And I have this color and then add more yellow and more water. And I get this color. And then I use a warm blue, again, a cool red, this time in a warm yellow. And I have these sort of subdued greens in here. I just added a bit more water. And then we have a warm red and warm blue and a warm yellow. And if you add more red, you get a pinkish color when you add, when you dilute it. And it's more like a sort of a red violet when it's not diluted. So this was a clinic. We don't read Windsor blue, red, shade, and adjustment of yellow. And you can do, you can choose your colors, you are this, hopefully. You can choose the colors from here that you think that would go well together. And then I did this. So this colors that I have here mixed exactly these colors. So thus this one, this one. And then I added a bit more water, so put some color here and they loved it even more. And then these are the greens and these are the papers in pink. So you can do something like that and you can even dilute down the color even more. Just put some in a, another whale and dilute it. And then I have, again a, really show a brush. This is number six. And also you can use, depending how big you want to do your painting, you can use one of these brushes, like a mop brush. This is a da Vinci one, but there are less expensive versions as well. And also these brushes are not bad either. This is a Princeton. So you can use some delay that. And then I'm just take some paper. You can start small. So overwhelmed by the big white paper. Or you can do something like this. I'm going to move this out of the way. So the cancer aquaria paper and I've added some washi tape. Or you can add some low tech artist tape. So it's quite hot. So this is not actually sticking that well, but we try it. And then you can make this sheet of paper, you can make it smaller like this. And you can do small sort of abstract little paintings in each of them. And even if you make this even smaller, you can do then a bookmark. So just to show you, I'm going to do just, I'm going to use it as it is. And we're going to make some little abstract paintings. 12. Class Project: So what I do it sometimes I just do, like in this case, I just do a little light pencil line for the branches. And then I just do some abstract leaves. For this one. We could do something like that little branch like this. For example, with another one that goes this way and one that goes this way. And then underneath that we can do again, some delight that for example, with this color, pick up some color and do some sort of maybe sort of circle like this. And it doesn't have to be perfect. So something like that. And this is just for play as well. So it doesn't need to be a masterpiece. This paper, sometimes it's a bit funny. That's why I don't really use it for precise work. But anyway, so we have something like that. And then maybe we can add a darker circle. Like I did before. What we could do it in here, like a smaller, darker one in here. Sort of goes on top of the other one. And maybe we can add a green one on this side. So this is drying quite fast and is not mixing that much. But if it's wetter, it will mix a bit more. Is just that. It's, it's very hot in here. The moment. It tastes quite fast. There's a little gap there. Okay? And then maybe we can have some of these lighter color just to give a little splash of color. We can have some sort of It's more dots in here. It's really up to you how you want to do this. And I can put some leaves now. So the leaves that I do just by putting the brush down, then pressing it. And then you drag it a little bit. And then as you're dragging you lifted. And then you can always adjust it if you don't like the shape. So I can put another one here. Like this. Maybe another one there. Let's turn out quite big. Then does the stem. If it's too late and you can see the pencil, you can always go over it again. This is a bit light, but I might just go over it again with a darker color. Then you can pick up a slightly darker version and do another leaf. Therefore, a sample like that. A little bit of water there. Then you can go over the previous leaf as well. So one would be underneath. So just the CEJ play experiment. This doesn't have to be masterpieces. Just for you to play and have fun. You can do as a sketchbook practice, for example. I'm gonna do I even darker one here. The color is mixing and it makes all this nice, sort of nice, playful shapes. Let's see. I'm trying not to put my hand in front of the camera, but it's not that easy. So you see if it's darker than you won't see the pencil anymore. But of course, the one to turn the page too much, but you can turn your page because this way it's a bit awkward to print. Okay? And then we can keep, maybe I'll have to turn it a little bit. We can keep adding leaves in here. They're just play with your colors. Then you can do one like that which you wouldn't see. It will be cut afterwards. To see we can do one here. At the end of this step. Maybe. Here. Let's see if I can boot going down like that. Then one here. Something odd in this area. The paint doesn't stick. Sometimes there's a fault with the paper as well. But this is just to play, so doesn't matter too much. Let's do another leaf in here. Nice and dark. Then maybe this side. So as you can see, we've done a little abstract painting with just a few colors. And sometimes I like to do a little shape at the bottom, like I did in male depending. So let's see how I can do this. So just put the brush down and just drag it across. You can do it straight or you can do it like that. Slit your imagination, go wild and then you can drop in some more. Paint, make a nice effect like this. Okay, so that's one way. Or you can do, just leaves for example. 13. More Examples For Class Project: So you can, for some values I quite diluted version of the pink and do some leaves. So like not leaves but petals, petals like this. And like that. So like an abstract flower for example, like this. And then maybe do another very diluted version of the grain. Do a flower coming out from here, for example. Some delay that maybe one from here like this. Then this also very diluted. And she can do one from around here. Some delight that and decide. Maybe you can let them touch a little bit. There were mix. Try not to turn the paper, but it's gets a bit tricky like that. Then maybe from this side. And then we can add some green in here, like this. And maybe on this side as well. So let's see. Then maybe we can have some small fillers thing decode, like small leaves. And then afterwards you can add, even with different media, you can add some details there. Or maybe I can put some of them more like the thicker color in here to do a sort of center of the flowers. Something like that. Maybe do a contrast with the yellow ones like this. Then maybe use the thicker green to do because sort of center of this flower here. So you can try and experiment different ways. And then we can do one last one, this color here. And we'll do something a bit more. Like a line down like this. Maybe the bigger brush would have been better but okay, something like that. And then this one we can do a circle or a sample here. See the pepper doing, it's doing something strange here. This paper is good for playing, but I don't think it's very good for serious work. But because we're playing here, that's okay. Then we need to wait for this to dry. So maybe we can play a bit more with this one. Thicker paint. We can do some more work in here, for example. Let's see the one to put my hand in the width, which I did already in the wet paint. Just put some small pattern in there, something like that. And it's up to your imagination really to do this little abstracts. And of course, it doesn't have to be this abstract. You can do different types of paints. Different type of paintings. So we can have, let's see, maybe something here. Let's have a look. I can add a bit more paint here. This where we painted before. And then if I add water in here, it will sort of do this. Ombre effect is still quite wet. But maybe we can have those waiting with effects. Let's try it, shall we? So we do a branch that, and maybe another little branch there. And then we can do our leaves. You can do them like that as well. So just one like a C-shape type of thing and then another one on this side. And you will leave a little blank in the middle. And he had the colors mixed. And it's done a different type of neutral color. If you want. When it's still wet, you can add more color, you can drop a bit more. So it makes this different effects. For example, in the previous one, Let's find a space where in here we can add another leaf. And you would get this total transparency effect. What else can we add a bit more? Because I quite like when you get this sort of transparency in here, you don't really see the transparency because the way I and j, but once they're dry, you can do this type of effect. I don't know if it's going to work in here, but we try something like that. So one leaf is on top of the other. And I suppose we could do it here as well. I'm not sure where we can put another petal. Let's see. Maybe somewhere here. We do this type of effect where this petal is sort of on top of the other two. As you can see, you can do all sorts of different things with your neutral colors because they're actually nice colors. And I don't like when people laugh called the mud or muddy colors before. Just to differentiate these colors from the luminous colors. Sometimes you want to mix, but I'd like to call them muddy because they actually are lovely colors. And you can do some beautiful neutral compositions. And you can use these for, for cards, for example, or four, pattern design. If you are into button design, you can use the neutral colors like this. So you can do a lot of different things with these colors. So we can try and take the tape off. Although usually you should wait until it's completely dry. But we try and be careful. So this tape was coming off anyway. And then now we see the end result. What it looks like. So there you go. Let's move these out of the way. We have three different compositions with your neutral colors. And you can do something like this, or you can do your own thing. Or you can do a big just one composition, just one painting. Or you can live in smaller ones. Divide the page again into like small square sections. You can do little tiny composition so you can play more with your colors. So I hope you will try this and I hope you will post your beautiful paintings, neutral paintings in the project gallery. So we can all see your beautiful paintings. I'm looking forward to see them. And I hope you have enjoyed the class and I'll see you in the next class. 15. Final Thoughts and Next Steps: Congratulations on completing the class. I enjoyed sharing my knowledge on mixing neutral colors with you. And I hope you have learned some useful information and skills that you can use in future. Your next step is to complete the projects for this class and make the color codes. Then you can maybe collect together into a column mixing recipe book and you can use it for future reference anytime you paint. I would really love if you posted your projects in the project gallery. So I can see your color cards and hopefully fun abstract art. Please remember to hit the Follow button here on Skillshare, somewhere up there so that you can be notified straightaway when I post a new class. You can also check my profile for more classes. And if you'd like to keep in touch, we can find me on Instagram at category anti-art. And you can also check out my website category anti-art dot com. Thanks again for taking the class and I'm looking forward to seeing you in my next class. Bye.