Transcripts
1. Introduction: Welcome to Oil Painting
with Steve Simon. Welcome to Mixing Paint. This is my third class in a ten class oil
painting curriculum, and it is specifically
about mixing color. Now obviously, color is pretty important in
the painting process. We're going to be
approaching this through three very
important aspects of color. The first is hue, the second is saturation, and the third is value. To that end, we're going to be learning about
those three aspects by creating a color wheel
from your own palette. Now, it's very important that you gain a good understanding of your own palette
through the color wheel, because everybody's colors
are a little bit different. Everybody's colors
have different what's called tint strengths. And it's important that you know the subtleties of
your own paint. We'll be creating
a color wheel from your palette and then also
what's known as a value scale. Once we have finished
that project, we'll utilize these tools to understand this
painting behind me and talk about
how we actually achieve the colors that
are on this painting. Thanks for your
interest in the class, and I look forward
to seeing in class.
2. Color Temperature: Before learning about hue,
saturation and value, there's a fourth aspect or property of color that
we need to discuss, and that is color temperature, which is how warm or cool a
color is considered to be. If we were to draw a line through the color
wheel like this, all the colors to the left of this line would be
considered to be cool. And all the colors
to the right side of this line would be
considered to be warm. In later classes in
this curriculum, we're going to be
talking a lot more about color temperature
and its significance in the painting process. Now we're just going
to be talking about color temperature in
terms of mixing color. Color temperature is
a relative thing. Even warm colors can be relatively warm
or relatively cool. Let's take a look at
yellow, for example. Due to the fact that
the oil paints that we purchase are naturally
occurring pigments. And that these pigments rarely
fall as the pure form of, say, a yellow, red or blue. We will be purchasing
a color that is a slightly cool yellow or perhaps
a slightly warm yellow. The cool yellow is influenced
by the cooler green, and the warm yellow
influenced by the warmer orange in my palette. The cooler yellow is
cadmium yellow light, and the warmer yellow
is cadmium yellow deep. A similar situation plays out in the red
section of our wheel. The warm red in my
palette is cadmium red. And the cool red is a
lizard, and crimson. We'll need to mix
these two colors to get our primary red. Similarly, in the blue
section of the wheel, we will need to mix a warm blue, in my case, ultramarine blue, with a cool blue, in my case, serilian blue. To achieve our
perfect primary blue, it is not important that you get exactly the same colors
that I have in my palette. But in creating our color wheel, it is very helpful to have warm and cool versions of
each of the primary colors. Now if you're not certain
as to which colors are relatively warm and
relatively cool, please consult the
materials needed list. You'll find it in the
download resources area of the project and resources
section of this class. On that list, you
will find a link to a web page that details which colors are warm and
which colors are cool. Please join me in the next
video to begin our project.
3. Project Part 1 - Getting Started with the Color Wheel: Welcome to our Mixing
Color project. In this project
we'll be creating a color wheel and a value scale. A list of the
materials needed for this project is located in the download resources area of the project and resources
section of this class. After you finish your project, I would appreciate
it if you would photograph it and upload it to the my project area to share with me and
with other students. Let's get started. I have
a nine by 12 canvas panel, and I'm going to start
this project off by just squaring off the
bottom of this panel, so I have a nine by nine square. Then we're going to bisect our square vertically and
horizontally as shown. And then draw a circle
in this square space, leaving about a half inch or
so margin on all four sides. Next, we'll draw spokes
to our color wheel corresponding to the 12
directions of a clock. Then draw about a 1
" diameter circle in the middle of
the larger circle. Next we'll draw another circle midway between the
other two circles. We have now draw a small circle everywhere as
spoke intersects a circle. Now we'll mark the
locations where we intend to place our
primary colors, yellow, red, and blue. Then we'll do the same
for the secondary colors, orange, violet, green there. Now we're ready to mix color
in your palette of colors. You should have a
cool and warm yellow. I'm using cadmium yellow light
and cadmium yellow deep. Now go ahead and put a dollop
of each on your palette. Now grab your palette knife. But before we start mixing, we need to talk
about tint strength. Tint strength is
how much one color will affect another when mixing. In our example, it is likely, depending on your
paint manufacture, that the warmer color will much more affect
the cooler color. We're going to mix a small
amount of the warm yellow into the cool yellow using
your palette knife, like a trawl, mix the
colors until you've achieved what you feel
like is a pure yellow. Then place this
pure yellow mixture at the top center
of your palette. Then tidy up your palette. Now I'll repeat the process
using a warm and a cool red. I'm using cadmium red and
Alizarin Crimson once again, pay attention to
the tint strength. This is part of the
process of getting to know your individual palette. In my case, I know the
elyserin crimson has a stronger tint strength
than the cadmium red. Now place your pure red mixture at the 04:00 location
on your palette. Then once again, clean up
your palette as best you can. Now we'll repeat the process
with a cool and a warm blue. I'm using Cerilian blue
and ultramarine blue. Place this mixture on a location corresponding to 08:00
on your palette. Now we're ready
to start painting our color wheel with
our primary colors. Make sure to clean your brush in between applications of paint. After you've finished painting the primaries on
your color wheel, please join me for part two.
4. Project Part 2 - Secondary and Tertiary Colors: Welcome back. We're
ready to start working on our secondary colors. We're going to start
with orange at the 02:00 location on your palette. Here again, pay attention
to tint strength. You will notice that
red will almost always have a much stronger
tint strength than yellow. We're also striving to get these mixtures about the
same size as each other, but don't worry if
they're a little bit off. You just want to make
sure that you have enough volume for the
subsequent colors that we're going to be mixing. Next, we'll be
mixing red and blue to form violet at the 06:00
position on your palette. Rounding out our secondaries, we'll mix yellow and
blue to form green at 10:00 Then we'll apply our secondaries in the appropriate locations
on the color wheel. Now we can start working
on our tertiary colors. We'll start on the top and start working our way
around the wheel. The naming convention of
tertiary colors, by the way, is to first state the primary color and
then the secondary color. What we have then is yellow,
orange, red, orange, red, violet, blue, violet, blue green, and yellow green. By creating this outer
ring of our color wheel, we have established our primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. These are, in effect, our
color hues or color families. They represent a 100% saturation of that particular color hue. In three, we will examine how to desaturate these colors and fill in the remainder
of the color wheel.
5. Project Part 3 - Saturation and Complementary Colors: Welcome to part three of
the Mixing Color Project. In this part, we will
learn how to desaturate color and the role
complementary colors play in this process. Complimentary colors,
you might already know, are directly opposite each
other on the color wheel. If, for example, we wanted
to desaturate yellow, we would add a little bit of its complement violet to it
to get a desaturated yellow. Now in this example, or in this exercise, we're vaguely desaturating to something like 50% Of course, different levels of desaturating depending on how much of
the complement you add. This exercise is less about a quantitative understanding and it is really a qualitative one of what happens when we mix our complements
and getting to understand our palette
better naturally. To desaturate violet, we
add its complement yellow. Go ahead and continue this
process around the wheel, adding your paint dabs to
the canvas panel as you go In this last step, we're going to use complimentary colors in equal amounts to achieve a
completely unsaturated color. I'm going to do this first by adding equal amounts of red, orange, and blue green. As you can see, you get
this muddy brown color. Now I'm going to
add this mixture as a couple to the inner
circle of our color wheel. Now in theory, if we mix two other complementary
colors in equal proportions, we should get a
unsaturated color. Quite similar to the mixture that we just created with red, orange, and blue green. Here I am mixing
yellow and violet. As you can see, the
result is very close. If you like, you can play with a few more complimentary pairs and add those to the
center of your wheel. There you have it,
your color wheel. In the fourth and final
part of this project, we'll learn about value
and create a value scale.
6. Project Part 4 - The Value Scale: So far in this
class we've talked about two aspects of color. Firstly, hue represented by the outer ring of
the color wheel. These are the purest
forms of the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Then secondly, we talked about how saturated the color is. This is the degree
to which a hue is influenced by its
complimentary color. This is depicted on
our wheel by how far out or in the color
resides on our wheel. Now we're going to examine
the third aspect of color, that is value, or how light
or dark the color is. To do this, we're going
to create a value scale. And to get started, we'll
need a pencil and an eraser. Then just begin by
drawing a rectangle in that open space on the canvas panel where
your color wheel is. The proportions of the rectangle aren't particularly important. But once you've
drawn the rectangle, divide the rectangle in thirds and then divide each
section in thirds again. You should now have nine relatively similarly
sized rectangles and label these
one through nine. For this part, we're
going to use burnt umber, ultramarine blue and white. I'm using zinc white here. We'll also need a palette knife, paint brush, paper towel, and solvent to clean
your paint brush. Let's begin by mixing
equal portions of the ultramarine blue with the burnt umber to
create a black. You might be
wondering right now, why don't we just use a
black instead of making one. There are a variety
of reasons for that. I just want you to
get used to creating your own black rather than
squirting it out of the tube. Black tends to make other
colors look uninteresting. We're just going to get
in the habit of not using black straight out of
the tube, at least for now. Now we will establish our lightest and
darkest extremes of our value scale by applying the pure white to the number
one spot on the value scale. Take care to clean
your brush in between. And then apply the black mixture that we have created to
the number nine location. Now place a small amount of white paint all the
way to the left of your palette and a small amount of black paint all the
way to the right side. We're just going to
be using these as references to help us try
to get our other values. Now, place some white midway between the white
and black paint you've put on the palette. And start adding black paint to that mixture in an effort
to try to create a value. Or a mixture that has a value
midway between the white, the black that you
see on your palette. Now, be careful not to add
too much black initially. Not surprisingly, black has a much stronger tint
strength than white. Now repeat this
process by trying to create a mixture
that has a value midway between the white
color on the left of your palette and the gray color
that you have just mixed. Then repeat this process
to establish a value midway between the gray
mixture and the black. At this point, what
we effectively have are values 1,357.9 Continue working in this way
to establish values 246.8 Along the way, you might find that
you have to go back and maybe tweak values 35.7 a little bit just to make everything work
properly, but that's okay. Continue to play with these
values until you have what feels like a gentle and
consistent gradation of value 1-9 When you're satisfied with your mixtures, paint them onto
your value scale. There you have a
completed value scale along with color wheel. Please share your
project with me and other students by taking
a picture of it and uploading it to the
my project area of the projects and resources
section of this class. Finally, join me for the last video in this
class where I will discuss how to apply what we've learned to an
actual painting.
7. Applying What We've Learned: Let's return to this painting
to discuss the usefulness of what we've learned in this
class on how to mix colors. This is an allegorical
painting I did of what's known as the Iroquois
Great Law of Peace. It's a fantastic story. But we're not here to
discuss the story, but rather to talk about
some of the lessons we've learned and to apply them
to this real life example. Let's take a look at a few
examples of how we can use our color wheel
and value scale to achieve the actual colors that we want to put
down on the canvas. We're going to start by
looking at this area up here. This yellow green area
highlights in the forest. And we can see that
in terms of hue, it's going to fall somewhere
between yellow and green. And it's also going to
be slightly desaturated. Let's say it falls right
in there somewhere. And it's also, let's call it a 1.5 on the value scale to
mix this color up here, high light up in the forest. We're going to first mix a hue between yellow
and yellow green. And then we're going
to desaturate it slightly with what
the complement which is down here in the
red to red violet area. A slight desaturation.
When we do that, we're going to find
that the value of that mixture is too dark. Then we're going
to add our white, achieve the correct value. Let's take a look
at another example. Let's take a look at this
part of De Gana Weds chest that from a hue standpoint is going to fall in between
yellow and yellow orange. It too is going to be
slightly desaturated, ever so slightly, let's just
say it falls right in there. After we mix that hue, we will go to the opposite
side of the color wheel. Down here in the violet, blue violet area, will slightly desaturate that hue that
we've mixed up here. Probably once again, we're
going to end up with a value that is a
little bit dark. We're going to add a
little bit of white to bring it into this value. Maybe a 22.5
something like that, that do it for that color point. You might be thinking,
wow, this seems all calculating when you're first
beginning this process. It is calculating,
but that's part of the process of learning
how to mix color, and particularly how to equate yourself with
your own palette. As I say, every
palette of colors, every manufacturer is going
to be a little bit different. The more experience you
have with your colors, the more this thing
will be second nature, and you'll never look at your
color wheel again at this. Speaking of your own palette, I should bring up another point. When we were creating
this color wheel, we started off by mixing warm and cool
versions of each of the primary colors so that we
created the primary color. Right? And we needed that those three primaries to be able to establish
the whole color wheel. Now when you're painting,
you won't be doing that. You're going to be cool yellow. Here's your warm yellow. In my case, this is
cadmium yellow, light. Cadmium yellow, deep over here. My reds are a lizard, crimson and cadmium
red and so on. So I'm not mixing these
two to create that yellow. I just know that that's where my cad yellow deep is
on the wheel, right? And then working accordingly. So far, the first two examples
of color we discussed, we used white to bring down
the value on our value scale. But the converse
also exists, right? We can mix a color. Our hue to get our hue in
our saturation correct. But that resulting mixture
then might be too light. And now what happens when
we have to darken it? Now you might
recall when we were creating the value
scale in the project, I mentioned we're
not going to use black to create this.
And what did we use? We used ultramarine
blue and burnt umber to create this dark color and then lightened it
through the scale. And I mentioned that I don't
like using black because it just makes everything muddy if we use it as a
darkening agent. This painting, none of the brush strokes on this canvas were executed with any black. In fact, I don't have black
in my palette at all, with the exception of, we'll be getting into portraiture in a later
class where we use the Zorn palette and
ivory black is actually one of the five colors
in the Zorn palette. But for now we're not going
to be using black at all. What is it then, that we
use as our darkening agent? Well, let's take a look at, let's say for example, this area in here of
Hiawatha's legging. We see a variety
of blues in there. And all of those blues, they're actually coming
almost straight out of my French ultramarine blue, which is right about
there on the wheel. But all of these values are
darker than this value here. The color that I'm going to use is the same
darkening agent that we used in creating
our value scale. And that is burnt umber. Burnt umber, not surprisingly, also has somewhat of a
desaturating quality to it. As you're adding burnt umber, it's going to darken and it's slightly going to
desaturate blues. And also desaturate yellows. Okay, to mix these different
shades of blue in here, I'm going to be
starting off with ultramarine blue and then
adding my burnt umber. It's going to slightly
desaturate that color. Not by a lot as you can see. It will also darken it, right? So let's take a look
at another example. Let's take a look at
some of these folds in Ganawda's cape or blanket
that he's wearing. These are of course, in the red family, something like my lizard. And crimson maybe with a
hint of cadmium red to it. If I'm mixing those colors
and coming up with that hue, that hue is going to be
a little bit too light. That's going to fall somewhere
in here, like 627 in, but this is really more like
7.2 maybe eight right here. Again, I'm not going to
be adding black to this, I'm going to be
adding burnt umber. Let's look at another example. In the shadows of
this grass here. This is going to fall
in the blue green area, maybe slightly more to blue. Let's call it that
hue right there. Again, if I mix those colors, that's going to be
too light again. I add my burnt umber, it's going to
desaturate slightly. If it doesn't desaturate enough, I'm adding complementary
colors to it. Right? But the burnt
umber is going to have a darkening and
desaturating quality to it. So after I mix in that burnt umber to get to the right
value, which should, feels to me to be 6.27
then I'm going to gauge, do I need to desaturate
anymore or am I good with it? So again, burnt umber is this universal darkening
agent and it's perhaps most important in
yellows because why? Well, yellow is such a light
color to begin with, right? So let's take a look at this fold in
Deganawita's blanket. And that is really in this
yellow, yellow, orange area. Let's say if we mix
the hue for that, it's somewhere in there. Wow, it's way darker
than that, right? It is. Let's call it a 6.5 or seven. I definitely need to
add my burnt umber to that area and darken it up, which will also desaturate it. And at the same time bring us up the value scale to
the proper darkness. That concludes this class. Thank you for
watching all the way to the end and happy painting.
Steve Simon, Simon Fine Art
