More Colour Magic...

Creative Sketchbooks

Module 1, Chapter 1
Activity 1.4

Mixing a Primary Colour with Black and White

 

I can only repeat what I said for Activity 1.3! There’s even more colours to be made by adding white  or black to a primary colour, and I am totally amazed at how many colours can be created from a very few tunes of paint. Anyway, if you add white to a colour it gets lighter and lighter and lighter in the most wonderful way,creating tints. I found I needed to add more white than I did previously with colours, as some of the changes were not noticeable.

 

With black, on the other hand, I found a very little goes a long, long way. You need the merest speck of black to make a darker shade (and you can always add another speck if it’s not dark enough). And black has a tendency to produce different colours, rather than simply making things darker or duller, which surprised me.

 

I have to admit, my samples look a little scruffy, but I don't suppose that matters in this context, though I could definitely improve my brush strokes.

And finally, a picture of my 'mood board' with a variety  of photos to inspire me for Activity 1.3 and 1.4. To start with, everything I put up seemed to be modern (well, modernish - not traditional at any rate) and geometric, which is odd, because I'm not a great lover of modern art (apart from Paul Klee). Possibly having to work in little squares gave me a rather skewed vision when I was looking for inspiration on colour merging and mixing! I think I'd overlooked the fact that colour is such an essential part of any painting, whether it's a conventional landscape, naturalistic portrait, or abstract. So I added some more conventional pictures, including a  photocopy of one of my mother's painted roses (because I think she's good at getting her colours just right).