Watercolor class--contrasts

The lessons in color contrasts the past two weeks were on temperature contrast, then complementary contrast. Temperature contrast doesn't have to be opposites--it can be as simple as which of two reds is warmer or cooler than the other. But complementary opposites are always temperature opposites, which is why they are such a powerful contrast to use. My Hithergreen class caught on to both right away. Critiques are so much fun at the end of class when we see how each one has interpreted the lesson. Unfortunately, my camera battery quit on me so I didn't get pictures. Today we're doing quantity (size) contrast. Can't wait to see what they come up with. Next week I'll be teaching a workshop in Palm Coast, Florida, for the Flagler Art League. It will be nice to go where it's warm for a few days.

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.

Catching up on my reading

I've been so busy with my own book that I've fallen behind in writing reviews for books I've read. So I'm in "review mode." I posted two reviews this morning, but I'm up to seven now, so scroll down to see what's new.

In Emotional Content: How to Create Paintings That Communicate Gerald Brommer discusses the differences between classic, intellectual and romantic approaches to painting. The key question is "What do you feel?" for the artist who wishes to paint more expressively. Select and edit your subject, making mini-thumbnails to record your impressions. Brommer emphasizes the importance of sketching to explore the subject, using color and temperature dominance and tonal values and textures. Watercolor collage is used in demonstrations. A sense of place, mood, weather and season can all contribute to the emotional content of your work. Brommer's books are always filled with useful tips and techniques.

Seeing the Light: An Artist's Guide. by Betty Carr shows you how to create depth, form and atmospheric light in watercolor and oil paints. Carr is adept at both, as you can see from this beautifully illustrated book. Supply lists are detailed for both watercolors and oils, including advice on plein air necessities. In both media there are exercises and step-by-step demos that are clear and easy to follow. Carr advises you to learn to think in three dimensions, to observe light on form and to use value sketches to help you see light and shadow on a subject. She recommends simplification of shapes and value patterns. This is a good book withi lots of information and helpful tips.

Carol Cooper's book, Watercolor: No Experience Required, is an easy guide to getting started in watercolor. The supply list is basic and very good, except that it allows cheap pan colors, which I don't think is a good idea, even for beginners. Also, the beginner doesn't need so many colors; a maximum of seven should do the job, if they're the right colors. A workspace layout is shown that could be helpful to the beginner. There are numerous well-done illustrations, including hands-on photos. Demos are simple and doable. Subject matter includes landscape, flowers, still life and textures. Composition is given very little attention, but the section on color, though brief, is clear. This is a good basic book that doesn't confuse beginners with fancy techniques and tricks.

Watercolor Secrets by Charles Reid is the work of a master painter. The book is filled with many sidebars of tips and tricks for Reid's spontaneous style of painting and is lavishly illustrated with sketches from his watercolor sketchbooks. His distinctive, personal approach is clear throughout in subjects of all kinds, both indoor and plein air. His supply list is brief, but more than adequate. This beautiful book is not for the beginner in watercolor technique, but it's a joy to behold.

Painting Crystal and Flowers in Watercolor by Susanna Spann is filled with her stunning artwork and many mini-demos throughout. The book includes a detailed list of supplies, but it's clear from the beginning that this book is not for the spontaneous watercolor painter. The primary subject is special effects in still life using watercolor. Design and color are touched upon, along with painting from photographs, marketing and exhibiting. The strongest point in Spann's book, in my opinion, aside from her magnificent artwork, is her emphasis on doing thumbnail sketches to plan paintings.

John Lovett's The Art of Designing Watercolors is subtitled "All you need to know to create more powerful paintings." The book contains demos and many illustrations throughout with an emphasis on design. From the "hows and whys of design" to tools of design (the elements and principles) and design tools in action, Lovett covers the essentials very well. Only one page is designated for supplies, so beginners need to look elsewhere to understand the basics. However, this book is a good one for an artist who needs to understand how to incorporate structure into pictures for more effective expression.

Work Small, Learn Big!: Sketching with Pen & Watercolor is an International Artist Publishers' collection of preparatory studies by seventeen artists from around the world. The book is a compilation of sketches backed up by photographs and slides, emphasizing the importance of these preliminary works to the execution of fine artwork. There are numerous illustrations and step-by-step demos. Each artist has distinctive choices of materials and media. Styles range from loose and spontaneous to highly detailed with many notes. Selling tips and artists' bios are included. One of the most important messages in the book is that "Mistakes don't Matter" in the sketchbook.

Thanks to George Bussinger at McCallister's Art Store for making these books available for review.

Paints and quilts

Busy week. Started a new watercolor class on Monday with sixteen returning students and one newbie. I love this class. They're like family. Most of them are regulars; a few come several times a year when they're not traveling or otherwise too busy. The best part is that even when I'm not in town, some of them meet and paint together, which is a great way to keep moving forward. Practice, practice, practice. On Wednesday we went into week four of the Exploring Color class: color mixing. Up till now we've covered color theory basics and pigment characteristics. They're beginning to see temperature differences and recognize transparency, as well as other paint qualities.

Between classes I've been completely re-doing tomorrow's art quilt color workshop for a more advanced level. Instead of going through all the color theory basics, we're going to jump right into color design, color contrasts and color schemes. There's so much to do that a one-day workshop is frustrating to plan, especially when you don't know the students. We'll see how it goes. This will more than likely be my last one-day workshop. It takes just as much work to develop as a longer one, but you're in and out so fast that it isn't very satisfying for me. The students seem to feel they've learned a lot, but it's much better when they have a couple of days to absorb it and try it out in the workshop. Sort of like explaining to someone how to drive a car and then letting them go off on their own to drive it. Well, maybe that's an extreme example, but you know what I mean.