Currently Browsing: Color Pigments 24 articles
In Context: Studies Are Also Thoughts about Color Mixing
A peek in my journal—that’s what “In Context” posts are. And typically not a lot of text in the post. Here you see a gouache painting on toned paper. This happens to be a hand-bound book I made with Annigoni Designo. It’s about 7-1/2 x 9 inches closed. (All my rulers have migrated downstairs where […]
Short Painting Sessions Yield Impactful Results
Don’t let your internal critic, or your busy schedule tell you there’s no time to paint. Pick up a brush and soften some dark-valued watercolor (which can be diluted for lighter values) and make a quick sketch. Focus on the shadow shapes you see, don’t think about anything else. Even if your end result isn’t […]
Limited Palette Portrait
This weekend think about limiting your color choices so that you can maximize your color mixes. Here’s a portrait with the colors I used listed. Four pigments resulting in a lot of different mixes. When you mix with a limited palette your color mixes have a relationship to each mix that is also on your […]
Another Limited Palette Portrait
You can click on the image to see an enlargement and read the text. I’ve got the colors swatched: Saturn Red, a cool red which I think is Quin Pink (based on how it’s reading in the finished portrait), Indanthone blue (PB60) and Azure Cobalt blue (because I love the granulation), Green Gold, Burnt Sienna […]
Cerulean Blue Chromium—Does it Stay or Does It Go?
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that my friends like to talk to me about pigments. A couple years ago my friend Paul started talking to me about Cerulean Blue Chromium (CBC). In the Daniel Smith line it’s PB36. There is no standard usage of paint names in the industry so in a different line a different […]
Lots of Palette Changes
I intended to simply write about this palette chart today, but in preparing this post I found lots of photos and scans of different palettes over the years. I am posting them today as a sort of virtual tour through my palettes since I’ve had the blog (2009; oops, actually going back to 2003 with […]
Color Chart Fun
The best way to learn your pigments is to put them to real-world tests painting subjects you might actually paint. Your mind has to work out how to adjust color temperature and value on the fly. You get to use up leftover paint that you already had out on your palette. Creating a color range […]
More Fun with Arches Text Wove
Here’s another portrait I sketched in my small (5 x 6 inch) purse journal that I made using Arches Text Wove paper. (The black background is to show off the fun torn edge.) I will be posting a video of yet another portrait made in this book, so you can see me working on this […]
Selecting Pinks for Portraits
At the beginning of this year I had some palette choices to make. Whether to keep Opera Pink on my palette was one of those choices. If you look at my journals and out of journal paintings you’ll see that I kept testing Opera Pink. It wasn’t a color that I actively sought out. It […]
Vintage Hair—Mixed Media and Palette Organization
Today it’s a photo step-by-step and not a video as I paint a mixed media portrait with a vintage hair style. Since I’m not teaching currently I sometimes turn the drawing table camera on for my own benefit to look at how I progressed through stages. But sometimes I simply take photos at various stopping […]