color

M. Graham cadmium red (a cad. red light), M. Graham lamp black, and Rembrandt titanium white.

I posted a swatch yesterday with vermilion and lamp black. Although vermilion and cad. red look very similar, they mix quite differently with black. When mixed with black, cad. red makes dull purples rather than dull mauves as vermilion does.

Also of interest

• Mixing pairs: vermillion and lamp black (0)
• Mixing pairs: ultramarine blue and burnt sienna (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: raw sienna and ultramarine blue (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: pyrol ruby and viridian (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: cadmium red and cadmium green (0)

Many years ago I discovered in one of Velazquez’s early paintings his thumbprints in the paint (at least I thought it was a thumbprint—who knows really?) The thumbprint was used to describe a piece of reflected light on the bottom half of a lime. There was something wonderful about how his thumb had lifted off some paint to reveal the warm ground underneath, and how that warmth acted as the glow of light from the surface the table on which the lemon sits, and how, in addition to it’s representational finesse it still remained a thumbprint like you’d see a five year old make while finger painting. When I put an actual lime in front of me I could see how he saw it and why he came to the conclusion that his thumb was the best tool for the job. I suddenly wanted to paint a lime but not just because of the color or shape or texture but rather I wanted to paint a lime because of how Velazquez moved the paint when he painted one. For a long while I would “see” that thumbprint in all limes… I was channeling Velazquez through a lime!

I don’t think I have anything I could add to that. Go read the whole thing.

It seems, from reading the occasional email that people send to me and looking over posts at internet art fora, that quite a number of less experienced painters have trouble learning the basics of color mixing. They often complain about mixing “mud” or feeling like the just don’t have any control over the mixing process.

That’s not too surprising, because color mixing is kind of complex. I have a whole article on the subject, but it’s pretty long and not really something a new painter is going to be able to digest easily. So here I’ll try something a little different. This article is about how to start learning how to mix paint. It’s for people just starting to paint and people who may have learned some other aspects of painting, but find mixing paint to be an exercise in frustration.

• Practice. Lots of artists have learned how to mix paint without any clue about color theory, through simple perseverance. Keep painting and over time you’ll get better at mixing.
• Simplify. Cut down on the number of paints on your palette. Try two or three. That won’t let you mix any color you want, but that’s a good thing. Until you can control three or four colors, it won’t help to squeeze out 20 colors that you don’t know what to do with. (And by the way, many of the greatest old master paintings were done with six or seven pigments. Total.) Only add colors to your palette after you’ve learned to control those that are already there.
• Simplify some more. As a beginner, you will learn more by spending five hours painting five small simple paintings than by spending five hours mucking around with one big complicated painting. Don’t try to make the kinds of paintings you want to be doing a year from now, make small paintings of just one or two things. No portraits.
• Throw away reference photos and work only from life. It’s hard enough learning to mix the right value, chroma, and hue without the distortions introduced by photos. Later on, once you really know what you’re doing, you may be able to paint convincingly from photos. I’m still pretty bad at that, myself.
• Learn to see color. Any color has three properties: value (lightness or darkness), chroma (intensity), and hue (where the color falls on the color wheel). Always think about colors in terms of those three properties. If you don’t know what color something is, you can’t mix a color that matches it. Value is most important, then chroma, then hue (that’s not an aesthetic opinion, it’s how your brain prioritizes color information). If you’re having trouble mixing the right color, stop chasing the hue. Get the value right, then the chroma. It’s OK for now if the hue is only approximately correct.
• Avoid pretty colors. Go for dull earth colors. Pretty, high-chroma colors are harder to control. You want to start with easy colors, then work you way up to the powerful ones. Especially avoid pthalo colors and other modern high-intensity organic pigments.
• Before you start a painting, you should know what the color scheme is going to be. It’s a great idea to do a very small, very loose color sketch beforehand. Only paint the big masses and don’t try to make a pretty color study. Don’t blend—just paint flat areas of color. Ted Seth Jacobs calls these “poster studies.” They make the final painting much easier, because once you’ve done the study, you know how to mix 90% of the colors you are going to use in the final painting.
• Mix slowly and deliberately. Much of the time spent painting is observation, thinking, and mixing. Application is a small portion of the time you spend painting.
• Figure out what color you want and have a plan for how to get it. If you have no idea how to mix a color, then stop working on your painting and figure out how to get an approximation of the desired color. Again, if you can’t get it exactly right, go for the right value.
• As soon as the mix goes wrong (turns to “mud,” becomes something you never expected, etc.) then scrape it off your palette. Think again, then start over. Don’t keep chasing the color.
• Learn what the paints on your palette do. If you don’t have a good idea what color you will get when you mix two of your paints together, you aren’t ready to make a painting. Practice mixtures until you understand your paints.
• Mix with a palette knife, not a brush. Keep your paint piles uncontaminated.
• Add small amounts of paint at a time.
• Most of the world is lower in chroma than the paints that come out of your paint tubes. Get used to adjusting the chroma downward unless you have a specific need for high chroma in a particular passage. Fortunately, when you mix two paints together, the result is usually lower in chroma.
• Don’t be afraid of strong value contrasts. Let your darkest dark be very dark and your lightest light be very light. A strong contrast of values allows strong modeling and convincing depiction of dimensionality.

I could go on and on, but I’m trying to keep this very simple. Perhaps later I’ll post some more suggestions.

Related posts and articles

• So you’ve decided to try oil painting
• The core palette
• Color and color mixing

Also of interest

• The kitchen sink palette (7)
• Mixing pairs: vermillion and lamp black (0)
• Mixing pairs: ultramarine blue and burnt sienna (0)
• Mixing pairs: cadmium red and lamp black (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: raw sienna and ultramarine blue (0)

In the Munsell color system, and in painting generally, the word for color intensity is “chroma.” Another word that means almost the same thing is “saturation.” Saturation is commonly used in computer graphics to describe color intensity. They don’t have quite the same meaning.

Saturation runs on the same scale (often 1-100) regardless of the hue or the value. So the most intense blue, no matter what, is a saturation of 100. The most intense yellow, similarly, has a saturation of 100. That’s very convenient for people who design software interfaces. And if you don’t really understand color, it makes perfect sense. What it doesn’t do is model color accurately.

In reality, the most intense yellow is far more intense than the most intense blue. And the highest possible intensity varies depending on how light or dark the color is. The most intense yellows are found at a relatively light value. The most intense blues occur at somewhat darker values. At very high and very low values, maximum chroma goes way down. But you can always set the saturation to 100 to get the most intense color at the hue and value you have currently selected.

Chroma runs on a different scale. In Munsell, the most intense chroma for yellow runs up to about 18. The most intense blue is more like 12. (I’m doing this from memory, so these numbers might be a little off.) Those numbers change with hue and value, so that the Munsell color space is an irregular, lumpy cylinder. That is a much more accurate depiction of human color vision than the saturation model. It helps to think about color in this way when you’re trying to understand actual color relationships.

Update and Correction

28 February 2008:

David Briggs, in comments to this post, writes:

To clarify, David, my objection is that you seem to be judging saturation as if it was meant to be a measure of colour intensity. It isn’t, it’s a measure of colour purity. The term for intensity of colour of light is “colorfulness”, the product of the saturation of a light stimulus and its brightness.

Many colours reflect light of high saturation, but only those that reflect light of high colorfulness (high saturation AND BRIGHTNESS) have high chroma. RGB colours that emit maximum saturation red light range from very low chroma (nearly black) through moderate chroma (dark ruby reds) to very high chroma (bright red or R 255). The importance of this concept of saturation for painters comes from the fact that when a coloured surface turns from shade into light, the colours of the light reflected from it tend to follow a uniform saturation series such as this.

And darn it, he’s right. Thanks, David. As this Wikipedia entry on colorfulness puts it:

colorfulness is the perceived difference between the color of some stimulus and gray, chroma is the colorfulness of a stimulus relative to the brightness of a stimulus that appears white under similar viewing conditions, and saturation is the colorfulness of a stimulus relative to its own brightness.

I, with my obviously very small brain, still find it most useful to think about color using the characteristics of value, hue, and chroma. But saturation does not mean what I said it does. I apologize for any confusion.

Also of interest

• Color and color mixing (20)
• The kitchen sink palette (7)
• More on chroma (0)
• Light brush, dark brush (2)
• Color blog (4)

Decker Walker posted a thoughtful comment on my recent tongue in cheek post on Chroma Cluelessness Syndrome.

I agree that indiscriminate reliance on high chroma leads to discordant, brassy, loud paintings. But the alternative of matching the chroma of nature is not, in my opinion, the best solution. Since paints have such a limited range of value and chroma compared to nature, painters who try to match nature’s colors exactly wind up with a dull, dim picture. This is most evident in a clear blue sky. No paints can mix a blue that is as intense and yet as light in value as that sky. Only by selectively and artfully exaggerating the chroma relationships and value differences observed in nature can a painter approach the color relationships we see in nature. I’m not speaking here of the expressive exaggeration of color for emotional effect, but simply of painting a realistic picture of the scene before you.

I don’t think there’s much disagreement between us. My objection is to artists who use high chroma thoughtlessly, because they think that a painting that consists entirely of intense colors is “prettier” or more “exciting” than one that is more modulated, or because all of the paints they own are high in chroma and they never learned how to mix them to get a desired chroma.

If I might be indulged in quoting myself, here’s what I wrote in an article on color mixing:

Let me give you an example. I was browsing through art books in a bookstore the other day and found one about the painting techniques of the impressionists. It’s a very well written book, based on lots of research on the individual methods of many 19th century artists. There are a number of demonstrations in which the author copies a section of an impressionist painting, using the methods of the original artist. In every single case, throughout the entire book, the author gets the chroma badly wrong and pretty much everything else right. In particular, almost every color is one or two chroma steps higher than the corresponding color in the original. Impressionists were not known for making dull pictures, but the author felt the need to “improve” the originals by bumping the chroma, even though she was clearly making a serious attempt to use the same or similar pigments and techniques. What’s more, I don’t think she knew she was doing it. I think she believed she was doing precise copies, but failed to see chroma differences right in front of her face. That’s just a guess on my part; some of the pigments used in the typical impressionist palette were fugitive, so she might have been deliberately compensating for their tendency to fade. But if that’s the case, I couldn’t find where she told us that, and she was certainly increasing the chroma even in areas corresponding to those painted with lightfast pigments. So either the reproductions in the book are badly messed up (and no one caught it) or this artist has a remarkable insensitivity to chroma.

I see similar errors on internet forums in which amateur artists post copies of old master works. The chroma is usually too high—often much, much too high. That might have something to do with how the work has been photographed, digitized, and presented on computer monitors, but in case after case, the posted copy appears consistently more chromatic than the original, even when the artist has shown them side by side. The artists usually seem unaware of this difference, and sometimes have trouble seeing it even when it is pointed out to them.

Decker’s example of pushing the chroma in the sky because you just can’t capture the chroma and value in paint at the same time is an excellent one. It makes me think of Maxfield Parrish, who painted skies with high chroma, but never cluelessly.

Also of interest

• Color and color mixing (20)
• Chroma Cluelessness Syndrome (9)
• The kitchen sink palette (7)
• Practical color mixing 3: chroma (4)
• Practical Color Mixing 2: Hue (0)

When I wrote my article here on color and color mixing, I did a pretty poor job of editing it. I’ve now fixed a number of problems and made the whole thing a lot more coherent.

It’s long, but I think it’s pretty good. You can find it here.

Severe Chroma Cluelessness Syndrome affects about 32% of artists. It is characterized by making paintings with uncontrolled high chroma (intensity). Symptoms include:

• High chroma colors make up most of the patient’s paintings.
• The patient might agree that a symphony that consists only of high notes would be excruciating to listen to, but thinks that a painting that consists only of high chroma colors is “colorful” and “exciting.”
• The patient doesn’t actually know how to adjust the chroma of mixes. In severe cases, the patient may apply only straight tube colors to your paintings, without ever mixing.
• The patient never uses earth colors.

Please give generously to the International CCS Institute. CCSI doctors are working tirelessly, day and night, to develop new and innovative treatments for this debilitating disorder.

Related article

Color and Color Mixing

Also of interest

• More on chroma (0)
• Color and color mixing (20)
• The kitchen sink palette (7)
• Practical color mixing 3: chroma (4)
• Practical Color Mixing 2: Hue (0)

A group web log about color for painters. Check it out.

Update

23 March 2008: Please note that the Rational Color blog has been transitioned to a forum. Membership is limited: you must apply and be approved. If you are a serious student of art you may want to do that. It is definitely a place for serious discussion of painting.

Also of interest

• What’s the difference between chroma and saturation? (6)
• Color and color mixing (20)

Any painter who is serious about color would find it very valuable to study the Munsell color system. I’ve described it here in this long article on color mixing.

This is a site with extensive information on Munsell. I’ve stumbed across it several times, but hadn’t thought to post a link until now. It contains a reprint of a short book on Munsell published in 1921. While the Munsell reference color chips have changed since then to take into account more precise color measurement technology and new pigments, the basic structure of Munsell color notation has not changed; nor does it need to. It’s still the most useful way for artists to understand and describe color.

There’s some stuff on the site about magnetic therapy and other miscellania which you should probably ignore. But do check out the stuff on Munsell.

Also of interest

• Wow. (7)
• Whites (4)
• Ultramarine in tempera and oil (4)
• The Velázquez palette (3)
• The kitchen sink palette (7)

Here are two swatches of ultramarine blue. The one on the left is in egg tempera. The one on the right is Doak’s ultramarine blue medium oil paint. Both are mixed with titanium white at the bottom. It’s not as obvious in this photo as it is in real life that the tempera is lighter and higher in chroma. A number of pigments, especially earths, are brighter in tempera.

Also of interest

• The classical palette (0)
• Pthalo pigments (9)
• The Velázquez palette (3)
• Online workshop: Renaissance Italian painting (3)
• Making gesso, part 2 (0)

I just got back from a lecture on color by Graydon Parrish. He’s one of the great modern American realists (here are a couple of links, plus a bad, and unwarranted, review of his latest painting by the New York Times).

I’m still digesting what Graydon had to say; more about it later. Graydon is a great proponent of the Munsell color system. If I didn’t already have a decent understanding of Munsell color terminology, I would have gotten much less out of the lecture. He lives and breathes it, even to the point of using color chips from the Munsell set to directly determine colors on a model or object as the starting point for his color mixes. Of the 1600 color chips in the Munsell set, Graydon says that he’s mixed and tubed about 800. Yes, he’s that hard core.

I also got to meet a number of people whom I had previously interacted with only online, including Jeff Freedner (who sometimes comments here as Painterdog) and Rob Howard, the moderator of the Cennini Forum and the public face of Studio Products.

I had a great time. Much to think about.

Also of interest

• Mixing dark yellows (2)
• Zero tolerance (3)
• Work in progress (5)
• Whites (4)
• Ultramarine in tempera and oil (4)

Here are some more swatches of oil paint.

Top row (L to R): viridian (Doak), cadmium green (Williamsburg), earth green (WB), pthalo green (M. Graham), Turkey umber (WB), French ochre extra pale (Doak), lead tin yellow (Doak), Bristol yellow (Doak), pyrol ruby red (Doak), cadmium red medium (Doak).

Bottom row: cadmium red (Graham), alizarin crimson (Graham), quinacridone violet (Graham), dioxazine purple (Graham), azo yellow (Graham), stil de grain, (WB), warm sepia extra (Old Holland), unbleached titanium (WB), transparent yellow oxide (Doak), Naples yellow (WB)

Related post

• Color swatches

Also of interest

• Ultramarine in tempera and oil (4)
• The Velázquez palette (3)
• The classical palette (0)
• Pthalo pigments (9)
• Mixing dark yellows (2)

Here are some oil paint swatches. For each paint, the pure color is on top and that color mixed with white is below. There is no way for me to take a picture, post it on the web, and have you see it accurately on your computer monitor. But this gives some idea of what the color looks like. I find this to be a useful reference when I’m searching for just the right color to add to my core palette.

Top row (left to right): Red ochre (Williamsburg), Italian burnt sienna (WB), vermilion genuine (Doak), yellow ochre (WB), Italian raw sienna (WB), raw umber (Old Holland), burnt umber (WB), terre verte (WB), ultramarine blue (Studio Products), German earth (WB).

Bottom row: Florentine lake (Doak), Bohemian green earth (WB), Tuscan red (Studio Products), Pozzuoli earth (WB), Indian yellow (Doak), Fra Angelico blue (Doak), Alger blue (Doak), transparent blue oxide (Doak), milori (Prussian) blue (Doak), indigo (WB).

Also of interest

• Ultramarine in tempera and oil (4)
• The Velázquez palette (3)
• The classical palette (0)
• Pthalo pigments (9)
• More swatches (4)

Here’s another great pair of complements: pyrol ruby and viridian. Both of these are from Robert Doak. Pyrol ruby is a fairly transparent modern organic lake pigment with a color similar to alizarin crimson. It is quite permanent. Viridian is semi-transparent and slightly on the bluer side of green.

The ruby is a much stronger tinter than viridian. They mix to a very dark neutral that can substitute for black.

I strongly encourage any painter to do these kinds of experiments with all combinations of the paints they typically keep on their palette.

Also of interest

• Complementary mixing pairs: raw sienna and ultramarine blue (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: cadmium red and cadmium green (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: burnt sienna and ultramarine blue (0)
• Mixing pairs: vermillion and lamp black (0)
• Mixing pairs: ultramarine blue and burnt sienna (0)

This is Williamsburg Italian burnt sienna and Old Holland ultramarine blue. I’ve previously provided a sample using raw sienna and ultramarine blue; I’ve noted before that some pigments have more than one mixing complement. While the raw sienna/ultramarine combo is slightly greenish, the burnt sienna/ultramarine is more neutral. It also produces darker darks.

Also of interest

• Complementary mixing pairs: raw sienna and ultramarine blue (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: pyrol ruby and viridian (0)
• Complementary mixing pairs: cadmium red and cadmium green (0)
• Mixing pairs: vermillion and lamp black (0)
• Mixing pairs: ultramarine blue and burnt sienna (0)