Three Ways to Mix Watercolours
Those of us who love books know what it’s like to go a little overboard in our collecting addiction! hobby. Once we run out of shelf space, we find new ways to stack, store, and display these treasures. If you’re like me, even your kitchen is game–under my wine rack I have two shelves dedicated to cookbooks. While I’ve never read them from cover to cover, they offer endless advice, and I value having them to refer to when I’m looking for a little structure for the next meal, rather than just throwing together random things that I find in the refrigerator and cabinets.
But isn’t this the case for all reference books? When you’re passionate about something, it feels good to have something tangible in your hands to browse in your spare time, because while it doesn’t feel like work, it’s still honoring what you love: cooking, for example, and of course, art. That’s one reason that I chose Sharon Finmark’s 600 Watercolour Mixes, Washes, Color Recipes, and Techniques as one of my “Editor’s Picks” during the North Light Shop sale. It’s full of color combinations that you can use to inspire your next painting, or simply study for comparison (master works, as well as future possibilities). Here’s just a sample of what Sharon offers in this book:
Three Ways of Mixing Watercolours
Most watercolour paintboxes contain two pigments in each primary colour–red, yellow and blue–one in a warm and one in a cool version. The concept of warm and cool colours is an important one, as it is fundamental to successful colour mixing. Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine are warm, while Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue and Lemon Yellow are cool. These are the colours you should get to know best and the ones you should use for your first experiments in colour mixing. There are three different ways for artists to mix watercolours, each producing a different effect. The following examples use ultramarine and alizarin crimson.
1. Palette Mixing By mixing pigments on the palette you can make a graduated range of colours, influencing them by altering the proportions of the colours in the mix. When you mix two primary colours together the resulting mix is a secondary.
2. Overlaying In this method of mixing, a glaze of one colour is laid over a dry area of another colour to produce the new colour.
3. Wet-Into-Wet The third way of mixing is also on the paper, but on damp or wet paper so that one colour merges into the other. Where they meet they produce a new colour. ~Sharon Finmark
During this limited-time offer, 600 Watercolour Mixes, Washes, Color Recipes, and Techniques is only $11.48. And dozens of more books and even DVDs are on sale, too, so go ahead, go overboard!
Happy reading,
Cherie
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