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Summer is flying by, but there's still time to sign up for my workshop.
It's all about color...
What's on YOUR palette?

Review of Confident Color book

Charley Parker posted an insightful review of my book over the weekend. Here's the link to his Lines and Colors blog. While you're there, mark Charley's blog as a favorite. His commentary on artists of the past and present, including fine artists and designers, as well, are always informative and entertaining.

Greater Cincinnati Watercolor Society

Last week I did a lecture, critique, and mini-workshop for this group of artists.
The subject was....Color. Imagine that. It was fun, and I took my student and friend, Sylvia, with me as my assistant. We had a good crowd of 50-60--mostly women--with 11 staying after lunch for the mini-workshop. Sylvia took some pictures of the event,posted below.

Preparing for another adventure

Seems like I just got home and off I go again. In about ten days I'll be flying to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I'll rent a car and drive north to fabled Door County to the Peninsula Art School to teach a 3-day Exploring Design workshop. I've heard so much about the beauty of the area and the wonderful art it's known for. Here's a description of the class--there are still a few spaces available.

EXPLORING DESIGN: CREATIVE CHOICES (MM807)
M-W, Aug 11-13, 9am-4pm
Open to All Levels
Design is the secret to more powerful artwork. Instead of struggling to make a painting work, learn how to use design principles and color organization to create more expressive art. In this workshop you will try new design ideas in your current media and experiment with monotype, collage and mixed media in a relaxed and fun atmosphere with no competition or pressure to perform. Every day begins with a short demo and ends with a class critique. Activities are based on The New Creative Artist, Exploring Color and Creative Collage Techniques.

Mixing Greens Redux

The subject of mixing green comes up several times a year in my classes and workshops. Here's the chart I demonstrated last week in my Hithergreen class on mixing a great variety of greens with the blues and yellows you already have in your paint box. It's worthwhile to take a couple of hours to make this chart so you have a reference for the different greens you can mix, at least until you become really familiar with them by using them often. I use white artist's tape to section the paper into 2-inch squares or slightly larger rectangles. Across the top I put the yellows, one per section: Winsor Lemon, Aureolin, New Gamboge and Raw Sienna are on this chart. Down the left side I place the blues: Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Phthalo Blue Green Shade, and Cerulean Blue. I dampen a square and put a swatch of the yellow in that column in one corner and the blue in the row in the other corner. Then I mingle the two colors on my palette and place the mixture at the bottom of the section, teasing the colors up into the pure colors so I get variations of the mixture throughout. The chart includes spring, summer, late autumn, bright, misty, foggy and sea greens with just one blue and one yellow in each mixture. Before you begin a painting, see if you can find the greens you need on the chart and include those colors in your palette. See also my blog on Mixing With Green.

More about Color Index Names

I'm not sure when ASTM assigned numbers to pigments, but it has been some time ago. Originally they did their testing for automotive and commercial paints. When they turned to artists' colors, I think it sort of whacked artists over the head. It was a shock to discover that so many of their favorite colors were fugitive or had fugitive pigments in their mixtures. ASTM set a voluntary standard for paints and paint labeling and quite a few manufacturers have complied by listing this information on their paint labels. Most are U.S. producers. The Color Index Names (which are actually letters and numbers, e.g., PR 254 means "pigment red, number 254," which is pyrrol red)are useful, but brands may look different, even with the same pigment. One of the more consistent colors is phthalocyanine blue green shade, PB 15:3, which has a different name in every brand of paint. It can be a challenge if you run out of paint and try to match a color, but you have a better chance if you know the ASTM name.

Finished....again

Just when I think I'm finished with my book, Confident Color, another task pops up. Last week I completed a color chart of 70 colors that may or may not be included, depending on space. I only had 68 of the colors and had to go to an art store the next day to get the other two. Yesterday I cut out the labels on my printed chart and taped them to a transparent overlay for the production department to match the alignment. I hope they use it--it will be very helpful to artists in understanding how colors are identified by ASTM International (American Society for Testing and Materials) color index names. Those are the letters and numbers you see on some of the tubes of paint, for example, PB29 for ultramarine blue. Manufacturers use so many different names for the same colors that I think it's important that artists start familiarizing themselves with these color index names so they know what they are buying. Even so, manufacturing processes aren't the same and colors don't necessarily match from brand to brand. PR108 is used to make cadmium red light, cadmium red medium, cadmium red deep and cadmium scarlet. Burnt sienna might be a synthetic iron oxide (PR101) or a natural iron oxide (PBr7). You might not want to bother with these technicalities, but they can make a big difference if you prefer a reddish sienna to a darker version or a transparent color versus an opaque one. You don't have to be a color-chart freak like I am, but you do need to keep track of what works for you so you can repeat the results you like.

I'm handing off the last pages and charts to my editor on Tuesday. Looks like I might get to enjoy Christmas after all, without book projects hanging over my head.

Not whelmed, but overwhelmed

When I was working on my previous book, The New Creative Artist, several of the artists asked to submit their artwork digitally. The production department at North Light Books wasn't too happy about it, but they allowed it. Since that time, North Light has emerged into the digital world and now they provide authors with very helpful instructions for preparing their artwork both on film or digitally.

Now I understand why they were reluctant to go digital. Not only are the artists not up to speed on the requirements, many professional photographers don't have a clue how to shoot and finish digital submissions. About half of my artists for my new book (which, by the way, has finally been titled: Confident Color: An Artist's Guide to Harmony, Contrast and Unity) have submitted digital files. I provided an information sheet for each one and about half followed the directions. This is driving me nuts. I spent six hours yesterday sizing, fixing perspective, matching colors and working up a demo for an artist who used a professional photographer to shoot his work. I asked everyone who did a demo to use a gray card which North Light provided so we would have a good color control. So far, most of them "forgot to use the gray card." Today I worked with another demo artist who had her final work shot by a color lab. The color is so far off I couldn't believe my eyes. Yes, it has the color scale, but why should we have to use it? There's no excuse for such poor results.

I'm still trying to figure out why this is happening. The only thing I can figure out is that people are being way too casual about the benefits of digital photography. Sure, you can fix it in Photoshop. But if you use the correct settings, set up with a tripod and good lighting--and a gray card--you shouldn't have to Photoshop it to death. It may seem easy on your end if you're the artist or photographer, but please, pity the poor production artists who have to make everything look good in the book. Pity me, using the work of 45 artists and having to get everything in shape to send to the production editors.

Let's face it--slides and transparencies are on their way out. So-called "wet labs" are closing or transforming into digital labs. So if you're illustrating books or entering shows that allow or require digital entries, do yourself a favor (and everyone else) and either find a good (VERY GOOD) digital lab to shoot your images or buy a good (VERY GOOD) digital SLR and LEARN HOW TO USE IT PROPERLY. Oh, pardon me, am I shouting?

Mini-palette goes to art therapy

I finally found a use for my mini Altoid palettes. Today I visited an artist friend who is in rehab for a serious illness. She can't walk yet, but until she can, she is able to sit in a chair and chat or read. Dottie is a painter of bright, sunny watercolors and I would love to see her painting again soon. I gave her one of my Altoid boxes, several small brushes, a 5" x 7" pad of 140# watercolor paper, and an empty box for water. Everything fit into two small Ziploc bags. Her eyes lit up when she saw the paints.

Here is how I made my Altoid watercolor box. Several other people elaborated on the Altoid box and created fancier boxes, but mine is the easiest to make (15 minutes, including filling it with paint) and probably the least expensive. You can put any colors you want into the half-pans. I used a full palette of ten artists' colors: Ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, Hooker's green, Lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, Indian yellow, cadmium red, permanent alizarin crimson, permanent rose and dioxazine violet. After seeing her smile, I think I'll make some more palette-boxes and keep them on hand for other artists who are temporarily unable to paint in their studios.

Book Review: Designer's Color Manual

Subtitled "The Complete Guide to Color Theory and Application," Tom Fraser and Adams Banks's book Designer's Color Manual (2004) is a visual delight and packed with fascinating information. My copy is tabbed all around the edges with Post-it stickers marking pages I want to reread. The 224-page book in glorious color tackles everything from color science to color in art and everyday life in an encyclopedic format that is delightful and understandable to read and enjoy, if not in depth on every subject. I especially benefited from the sections on color in publishing, web design and color marketing. There is even some detailed "how-to" on image manipulation, including color management for your computer monitor and printer (one of my tabs is there!). This book won't teach you how to paint in color, but it will give you a remarkable overview of color in almost every aspect of modern life. Highly recommended.

Exploring Color talk

Last night I had a good time speaking at the Fairborn Art Association. This is one of the friendliest groups I know. I've been a member for many years--maybe twenty or longer. I don't get to the meetings often. When I first joined I was on the board of a local group that met on the same night. Nevertheless, they always greet me as a friend and neighbor and I love that.

I knew the crowd would be small,just by looking at the weather map. There were storm warnings, tornado watches, and big black clouds in my rear-view mirror as I drove to Fairborn; and as I drove toward town, a humongous horizontal flash of lighting raced from one end of the sky to the other just in front of me. By the time I got there, the wind had kicked up and it was raining hard. My umbrella turned inside out as I walked from my car to the gallery.

About thirty people braved the storm. They were very responsive. I talked about the three color systems in my book, Exploring Color. First I showed them the split-primary color-mixing method. Then I moved to using compatible colors and finally, to the subject of color schemes, which is covered in my book but not yet on my website. This was a lot of material to work into a little over an hour, but in talks like this my objective is to give an overview of the options artists have when they tap into a system instead of using random selection or frustrating trial-and-error over a period of years. You can find a system that works best for you or even move from one to another as the mood strikes you. In either case you'll get consistently better results with your color. And, needless to say, once you understand how these color systems work, you can break the rules to please yourself and still have beautiful color.

Painting rainbows in watercolor

Somebody in my class asked me a couple of weeks ago how to do this. Not that it's a great idea, because rainbows are so variable and tend to look hokey in your paintings, unless you happen to be J.M.W. Turner. Nevertheless, yesterday I showed them a way to do it in watercolor just by blending clean, diluted pure colors on slightly damp paper. It isn't hard to make a rainbow, but to put one in a painting and have it look realistic is a whole different thing. That takes practice. My first recommendation is to Google "rainbows" and see what they really look like. Most of them aren't complete. The colors are brighter near the ground, then they often disappear before the arc is completed. And red is always at the top, with violet at the bottom (and often hard to see). If there's a second rainbow reflected above it, the colors are reversed. And just in case you learned ROYGBIV when you were in grade school, there is no "I" for indigo in the spectrum, therefore it's actually ROYGBV. Newton must have been having a mystical moment when he described the colors--had to have seven, as in the days of Creation and notes on the musical scale.

Request for paint names on the color wheel

A blog reader asked me to post a larger version of the pigment color wheel so she could read the labels on the colors. Believe it or not, it's better if you don't know the names. The value of the exercise is in using your own paints and testing them to see where they fit on your color wheel. When you buy new colors, before adding them to your palette, add them to your pigment wheel so you can see their relationship to your other colors. Paints with the same names may be very different in various brands. Not only that, what you see on the monitor or in a printout is not a true match for the actual paint color.

I've blogged before about split-primary color-mixing, which may help you if you're struggling with mixing. You'll find just about everything else you need to know about color mixing in Exploring Color. There's even a pigment wheel with color labels on it. Just remember, the printed colors aren't matches for the pigments.

The pigment color wheel is finished

Finally I've finished the watercolor wheel I started for my class several weeks ago. I did blue first, then added red the following week and yellow a week later. (Click on the "color wheel" label below to see the three work sheets and watercolor wheels that I painted last month.) Today I filled in orange, green and violet secondary colors and the neutrals in the center. I finished it in my studio so the class wouldn't lose painting time next week. I'll show them the finished wheel, explain a couple of things and they can examine it more closely later if they wish. Mind you, I'm not advocating having or using all these colors. I want to show that there's a continuum around the color wheel that reveals temperature relativity from one color to the next. This is a good exercise for your "color eye," to see if you can distinguish between warmer and cooler colors and see how their neighbors on the wheel influence their temperature. The colors around the perimeter of the wheel are mostly high tinting-strength, high-intensity colors. Except for a few colors in the red area, outside the perimeter are the low tinting-strength, high-intensity colors. Inside the wheel are the low-intensity colors and neutrals.

Here's the test sheet for the colors I did today. It doesn't matter whether you make a wheel or swatches, but this is a good way of learning about your paints. As I said in an earlier post, the color wheel above is similar to the one I made for my first Exploring Color book, published in 1985.

Exploring Color for Kids

On reading my recent blogs about comparing color temperatures, Laura Lemley of Potomac Valley Watercolorists in the Washington, DC area, emailed the following (used with her permission):

In addition to painting, I teach children 6 to 18 years old. They are just as excited as your adults to learn to recognize the warm to cool range in watercolor paints. I started the 8 weeks of lessons with the color wheel…they learned color mixing for the colors other than primaries. First they arrange all my tubes of a particular color from warm to cool by guessing. The color stripe and name sometimes give them clues. I take off all the caps and I read the name of the color to them as they take turns painting a ½” wide stripe from pure to tint on a “chart” (long narrow strip of watercolor paper. When they see that one is out of place, we mark it to be cut and put in the correct order. Afterwards they select three they like from the chart and do a painting. There was an outstanding painting of a brown red horse in an orange red tall grass field with a warm red tinted sky by an eight year old! The older children chose to make a pop art collage of red objects from magazines to make a bouquet including tints, pure color and shades. If you have any teachers who need ideas, you might pass along my enthusiasm for painting color with your guidance!

What a fun way for kids--or anyone--to play with color. Thirty years ago one of my boys took an introductory art course and they painted one color in each class, attempting to make a perfect color wheel by the end of the semester. No wonder he hated art class! (He turned out to be a fantastic potter, though.)

Yellow hits the charts

Yesterday we explored yellow watercolor paints, working at discerning between the warm and cool yellows. We all know that yellow is a warm color, but which are warmer and which cooler? Some of them are very close and will no doubt differ between brands. I added in several earth colors, some of which ended up closer to orange than yellow, so that's where I put them on the wheel below.

On the chart above the cool yellows are on the right of the paper and the warms on the left. On the color wheel at right the cool ones are heading toward blue (right) and the warm ones are heading toward red (left). When you're mixing colors, yellow is a hard color to darken without changing it into a greenish-olive or a muddy brownish color. It sometimes works better to use the yellows and yellow-oranges in the earth colors toward the center of the wheel to darken yellows. The mixtures are richer.

Seeing Red

Last Monday we explored reds in watercolors, as we did last week with blues. Here's the chart that I did in class, explaining the paint characteristics of each pigment and the relative temperature as I went along. I let the class help me decide where a color belongs. I wish we had full-spectrum lighting in our classroom, because the colors tend to look "off" and I have to remember to mention this. Lighting makes a huge difference when you're exploring colors.

This color wheel gives a better idea of where the colors fit in the continuum around the wheel. The ones on the circle are the best match I can make to the ideal colors. There may be better ones, but I'm just using the ones I have. The colors toward the center are darker, earthier variations of the wheel color. The center color will be black. Around the edges are variations of the main colors, some with weaker tinting strength. Way out at the edge on the left is Opera Rose, a color that is fluorescent and doesn't really fit with the others.
The completed color wheel is shown in my Exploring Color book, first published in 1985 and revised in 1998.

Singin' the Blues

We almost had a full house for the first session of Exploring Watercolor at Hithergreen Center today. Twenty-one returning students, three newbies, one absentee recovering from surgery and one perpetual absentee. (Don't ask.) I decided to get them more involved with different paints. Most have been with me for two or more years and have had the basic color-mixing exercises. Some have tried other colors and others are still using the basic palette. So today we started with the blues. I should have organized the chart, but just put the colors down as I talked about them, so I hope I can reconstruct the thing and tell you the colors in the accompanying illustration.

Top row: Cobalt Blue, Phthalo Turquoise
Second Row: Winsor Blue (Red Shade), Winsor Blue (Green Shade), Cerulean Blue (Red Shade), Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine (Green Shade)
Third Row: Cobalt Turquoise Light, Manganese Blue Hue, Manganese Blue (genuine), Rembrandt Turquoise Blue, Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine
Fourth Row: Cobalt Blue Deep, Indigo, Indanthrene Blue, Cobalt Blue Deep
Please note that web colors cannot accurately represent paint colors, so the colors shown aren't exact matches for the chart.

We talked about color temperature, discussing the positions of the blues relative to blue-green, which in theory is the coolest color on the color wheel. I also talked about the transparency or opacity, staining property and tinting strength of each pigment. You will find more information on these properties of paints on my web site here and here, and also in my book, Exploring Color.

This was great fun for me and the class asked great questions. Several said they're looking forward to a new color next week.

We're going to do a color per week for awhile to familiarize them with those they haven't used yet. By the time we're finished, they should be able to find the right place for any color they choose.

More Art Book Reviews

Ron Ranson on Skies (Studio Vista, 1998) is for landscape painters in any medium who love to feature skies. The book shows techniques mostly in watercolor, but does include instruction on some other media, along with excellent photographs of cloud formations and many wonderful sky paintings. This is a great reference for landscape painters. I'm a sky freak myself and love paging through this book to look at the photos and paintings.

Colour and Light in Oils by Nicholas Verrall and Robin Capon (Batsford, 2004). The pages on Understanding Oils are very informative and user friendly, even to a beginner in oils like me. There aren't many swatches for visual comprehension, but the artwork throughout is dazzling, but not overwhelming as a possible goal for an artist to strive for. Verrall and Capon cover painting color and light, different types of subject matter and the working process, with a few demos scattered throughout the book in two or three stages.

The Digital Canvas: Discovering the Art Studio in Your Computer. (Abrams Studio, 2006.) This book by Jonathan Raimes almost makes me want to sell all my painting gear and just play with my computer. It's dazzling and I really think I could do it with this book as my text. The book has page after page of brilliant color effects with simple computer screen shots to show the tools for achieving them. Probably not for beginners, but definitely for creative computer artists.

Barbara McGuire has written Embracing Child Art. (Krause, 2001) to give adults ideas on how to encourage a child's natural creativity and ultimately help them to make a few treasured objects. There are wonderful suggestions for guiding Little Artists and helping them create projects with their own art to last a lifetime. The best part of the book is page after page of wonderful examples of child art.

Helen Van Wyk's Color Mixing the Van Wyk Way: A Manual for Oil Painters (Art Instruction Associates, 2000) has quickly become a classic since it was first published in 1995. She keeps the color concepts simple, emphasizing primarily color temperature and comparing a few basic palette choices for simple still lifes and portraits. This book would help beginners in oils to understand their colors and master color mixing of specific pigments.

Helen Van Wyk's Favorite Color Recipes. (Art Instruction Associates, 2000) expands somewhat on the previous book and introduces a greater variety of subjects with color recipes in oil paints that are her recommendations for painting them. This book ale effects in this book are understood, the painter would be well advised to develop a more personal palette of colors.

Barron's Creative Painting Series: Color. (2005) by Gemma Guasch and Josep Asunción contains a wealth of useful information on color and numerous beautiful reproductions of masterpieces to illustrate the use of color throughout art history. I love that part of the book, but I don't think the demo paintings do it justice. Maybe it's just the design of the book. Check it out, though, because it has a lot to offer.

Once again, thanks to McCallister's Art Store for providing books for my reviews.

Art Book Reviews

Vicky Murry's Mastering Color: The essentials of color illustrated with oils. (North Light, 2006) This book offers solid color theory applicable to all media. The book is beautifully illustrated with swatches and paintings by the author. The section on supplies and equipment is concise with a nice comparison of different ways oil-painting techniques--direct, indirect, plein air and alla prima. The basic palette is limited and very effective. There's a nice little section on color schemes, a subject often neglected in painting books. Murry explores individual colors and introduces a few design concepts, with a variety of helpful hints along the way.

A Painter's Guide to Design and Composition by Margot Schulzke (North Light, 2006)includes the work of twenty-six contemporary masters who describe their process of designing their artwork. This is a beautiful book with lots of demos and color illustrations, but I find it a little confusing. The design-and-composition objective tends to get lost in the plethora of different techniques. I enjoyed reading it, but probably won't include it in my personal art library.

I love Jean Uhl Spicer's book, Bright & Beautiful Flowers in Watercolor (North Light, 2004.) If I were a flower painter, this is how I would want to do it. Spicer's supplies and equipment section is concise and complete. Her basic palette of colors is fairly limited and well balanced. The chapter on color covers the basics in such a way that I think beginners can grasp the concepts quickly. The chapter on composition isn't quite as accessible, but the remainder of the book, which includes various transparent watercolor techniques, tips and demonstrations, is very good. Way to go, Jean.