Colours

And mixing

I never studied or learnt Colour theory (unless you count the very basics we learnt at primary school (I’m not counting that)). This year I decided that I need to learn some new stuff and go on some adventures.

Hope you all have had a nice week. My iPad broke but I found myself a new hobby. Colour mixing! I have loved painting blobs and colour wheels for the past week. In my spare time I’ve been making charts, taking notes, asking myself questions. It’s been an…Adventure! On my birthday last week I took a day off work and lay on the lounger in the shade and mixed paint. (I also went for a swim and spent time with my loved ones).

I decided to do some practical Colours experiments. To learn how Colours work. It may all be very elementary to you, but to me it was new to approach Colours with purpose rather than intuition. I chose 3 yellows, 3reds, 3 blues, an assortment of browns (3), two greens and a black and a white.

My husband calls me a lounge lizard as I never sit up straight when I draw. Why sit when you can…lounge?

I started off by making a make a few different colour charts but found them difficult to read

Next I Started making Colours wheels. I picked one red, one yellow and one blue colour, plus black and white for each wheel. Some Colour wheels looked a million dollars whilst others looked like they had the flu.

Our dog, whilst I lounged and made colour wheels dipped his very flamboyant tail in the palette and got himself a rainbow tail. He does that quite a lot, waves his plume of a tail in paint. Our cat has no tail at all but like Ophelia ( a lovely wee girl)pointed out having cat sat our Eddie together with her mum; he often has poop sticking out of his butt.

Some Colours are really friendly. Whichever colour you mix them with, they will shine. Others are bleak or murky.

When swimming in the ponds on the Heath the water is the colour of Indian Yellow mixed with Windsor Blue. See if you can find this mix in any of the many charts of this post. The water at the West Res on the other hand is more like Raw Umber mixed with Cerulean Blue. I’m scared of opening my eyes in deep murky ponds or reservoirs. I assume there are some kind of creature below the surface. So I squint. And hope for the best. I’m also quite blind without glasses.

Crimson + Windsor Green = Something from a kids book, but also blood or a nice wine?

Yellow is the most difficult of Colours. I love yellow but I find it hard to make it sit nicely among other Colours. It either takes over or the picture curdles

Oh yellow why are you so difficult to play with?

Ultramarine blue on its own is so blue, so fancy and festive. When mixed with others it changes completely. Our house, the house I grew up in was a little duller and lighter shade of Ultramarine blue+ Cerulean Blue.

These combinations are an autumn on the Heath. When it rains a lot. I think if worms and slugs and hot tea.

Cerulean and Windsor Blue are both easy going chaps.

I end this newsletter with a quote

“Creativity is not the possession of some special talent. It’s about a willingness to play”

( John Cleese)