Exercise: Primary and secondary colour mixing

I used oils for this exercise as I have a much greater range of colours in this medium than acrylics.

The yellows I laid next to each other (in varying sequence) were: yellow ochre, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow and cadmium yellow pale.  I found painting these over the neutral gray background did have an effect on them – the grey showed through slightly, giving the yellows a greenish tinge.

Notes on these colours to differentiate in terms of hue, chroma and tone were:

-       obviously the yellow ochre is the darkest tone, it is very much a brownish yellow rather than a true yellow

-       the cadmium yellow was also a darker yellow – almost midway between the palest yellow and the ochre. 

-       the lemon yellow was the brightest colour, and looked especially so next to the ochre, but I felt it also looked slightly greenish when placed with other yellow

-       the cad yellow pale seemed to me to be the truest yellow – it is neither the palest nor the darkest, has a strong, concentrated colour and, even when placed next to other colours, doesn’t seem to lose its “yellow-ness” so this was the colour I chose as my intense yellow, and therefore the primary to use for the following mixing exercises.

The blues I had in my palette were French Ultramarine, Prussian Blue and Cerulean.  Originally I laid out the ultramarine without mixing or dilution, but decided it was too dark on its own, so added a little white to bring out the hue.  I also did the same with the Prussian Blue as, undiluted, it is too dark a tone to clearly see the hue.  Observations were:

-       Adding white to the ultramine brings out the violet tones in the blue which are not noticeable when the colour is straight from the tube.  I therefore discounted this as the most intense blue.

-       The cerulean, when placed next to other colours (and most noticeable between the dark ultramine and Prussian blue & white) is a very intense colour, but has obvious shades of green, it almost looks turquoise here.

-       The Prussian blue with white added has a slight hint of violet, but much less so than the ultramarine and has much less of a green hint than the cerulean. 

I have four reds – Crimson Alizarin, Cadmium Red, Indian Red and Crimson Lake.  I added a little white to both the crimson alizarin and the crimson lake to better view their hue.

-       The indian red is a very brown-red with a hint of orange – it is quite a dull colour when placed next to the other reds and looks a true brown next to the cadmium red

-       The crimson alizarin takes on a slight pink hue when mixed with white and also appears to be towards the blue spectrum

-       The crimson lake is almost maroon and looks darkest (and not really red at all) when next to the cadmium red

-       The cadmium red is an orange red but has by far the most intense chroma and is a light red – making all the other colours around it appear darker

The next part of the exercise I completed on a neutral gray A3 sheet – and made a total 8 colour scales on this page:

The top three scales are using the primaries chosen in the exercise above (as suggested a little crimson was added to the cadmium red and a little white to the Prussian blue to better achieve the primaries).  Although I tried to add the same amount of the second pigment to the mix in each case, I found that the original colour changed almost immediately any quantity of the next was added (ie the yellow towards blue instantly looked green rather than yellow).  You also seem to get a range in the middle of the scales (around the secondary colour) that appear at first to be very similar.

You can also see here how the colour wheel is not accurate – as stated in the notes, red and blue do not make purple (I also did a very small scale of process magenta through to ultramarine next to this scale for comparison).

The second group of three scales were made by using the primaries as above, but adding a little white to try to maintain consistent tonal value.  After taking a photograph of the scales, I converted to black and white to see how well I had done in this respect – I found varying results!

The most accurate consistency in tonal range was the yellow through to blue scale, although the yellow is still a few tones lighter than the blue, although not as strong a contrast as the yellow to red.  I think this demonstrates how difficult it can be to match tones in colour, even when you are trying hard to do it.  By comparing the tonal scales above, to the actual colour ones, you can see just how much darker reds and blues are to the yellow end of the spectrum.

Exercise – Broken and Tertiary Colours

The final two scales on the above sheet are the tertiary colours.    The second I think is the most accurate in terms of tonal balance (practice obviously makes perfect!) but I also used a bigger scale between the two colours (21 gradations in total) to explore the full range of colours created.

Exercise: Complementary colours

I made my colour wheel in oils (although not very neatly …) on a white canvas sheet.  As suspected, the violet was not very successful as we learned earlier that red and blue don’t make violet – you actually need more of a magenta to mix with the blue.  As I found earlier on doing the colour mixes – yellow (although the brightest pigment on the wheel) loses its hue most quickly when mixed with other colours (ie you need a much higher ratio of yellow to green to get a yellow green – if you mix equal quantities it still just looks like green, and the same when mixed with orange to make yellow orange).

As I had enough paint left over from these mixes, I added a little white to each to see what the tint of the colours would look like – and I found it surprising how dull the colours on the red end of the spectrum became (from red-orange round to blue-violet) – the colour here loses all of its intensity.

I made two sheets of mixing complementary colours on a neutral grey ground. I found it quite difficult sometimes to match the tones of the complementaries particularly, as found above, those on the yellow spectrum – those on the red/green and red-orange/blue-green I had no difficulties with (or perhaps it’s just my eyesight!).

The other thing I found was just how many more interesting browns and greens you can create without resorting to a pre-mixed tube!  As you always end of mixing those colours anyway (especially for greens – they are normally way too bright, especially for landscapes) you may as well make a more interesting colour yourself.

One of the main things I noted was how quickly the original colours were neutralized by their complementary – the most noticeable of these were those containing red (red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange) – any hint of the complementary and the intensity of the colour disappeared instantly.

I also found that the yellow and yellow-green when mixed with their complementary (violet and red-violet respectively) produced a very similar range of khakis and greens.

I placed the two complementaries at the end of each scale to gauge their effect on each other – as expected from my research, each colour appeared much brighter than when painted at the beginning of the scale.  Those complementaries containing the primaries – orange/blue, red/green, yellow/violet – appear to have the strongest contrast when placed next to each other.  The secondary complementaries– red-orange/blue-green, yellow-orange/blue violet – gave a very wide range of tertiary colours. 

One article I read on the web on colour suggests making a painting only using complementaries and all the shades, tints and tones that can be produced by them, and I think this could be a very interesting exercise to do.