23rd Jan 2018 intermediates class home help

This week following on from % mixing and painting the colour wheel, where we were exploring intense and semi neutral colours, this week we were exploring mixing semi neutrals with 4 colours 

Cad red, cad yellow, 

pthalo blue

ultramarine blue 

Hookers green.

See the exercise below, each painting contains a mix of all 4 colours, but in unequal quantities, on the left, the painting has a dominant blue, and a subordinate yellow, the opposite is true of the painting on the right, but the only intense, unmixed colours are in the sky in the middle, the reason for this is to make the intense colours 'sing' ( a ) by being complimentary ( opposite on the colour wheel ) and making most of the rest of the painting semi neutral, i.e mixed with their complimentary colours.

By making our focal point different from the rest of our colours makes the centre sky line of the painting the lead vocal, and the rest of the painting singing in harmonies, but adding all these colours together, gives us more subtle harmonies that just using 1 blue or prance, see smaller thumbnails below that, the sky line is still 'singing' i.e it stars out, but the colours are not very beautiful or interesting to look at.

Some of us need more practice at application, so I will suggest looking at the beginners exercises for this week on this blog, or if you want a beginners film, you can look me up on art tutor .com

here's a link

https://www.arttutor.com/artists/gilly-marklew

But here's a few tips from this week.

remember not to lift your brush off the paper she you don't want a pool to run down your picture, take it off the side of the paper, or, dry your brush out and mop it up from below, remember, surface water consistency can be best achieved by limiting your painting time, so lower the expectations you have for the 1st wash, let go of the outcome to some extent, wait for it to dry, and have another go later.

If you are mixing 4 colours together with the aim of 1 colour being dominant, don't clean your brush out with the dominant colour, just add a tiny amount of another colour and mix that separately in the palette to achieve a slight change, too much and you'll end up with a rainbow effect.

Good luck with your home practice and I'll see you next week. : )