There are as many colors as there are grains of sand!
Color can be one of the most challenging aspects to moving forward in your painting endeavors. If you skip learning the basics of color you will sadly be destined for the mud pile!
Even if you think you know it all... its a good idea to recap color.
I am going to teach you how to make practically any color under the sun using only six colors! This helps keep it real clean and simple.
The trick is two different reds! (You will see why later.)
The colors are: Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Pale Yellow, Cadmium Red, Rose Red, White and Black.
.(White is for tints, black is for shades and gray is for toning.)
Here it is, my secret stash/cache of the only colors you will ever need to make any color under the sun!
Now a quick look at our rainbow. Red, Orange,Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple.
R O Y G B P : Rainbow Of Your Glowing Beautiful Paints.
Indigo just throws everybody off! This is, like I said, SIMPLE!
Yellow, red and blue are your PRIMARY colors.
Purple, green and orange are your SECONDARY colors.
ANY opposite colors on this simple color wheel will give you MUD! Or it will give a beautiful shade of brown, whichever way you look at it. Going around the wheel now, blue and yellow make green, yellow and red make orange and red and blue make purple. From here you take your primaries and secondary colors for a long walk into the tints, tones and shades forest, VIOLA! Almost every color in the spectrum!
Now back to "Why TWO reds?"
Well, one red is an orange-red, and the other red is a blue-red!
Contrary to popular belief, red and blue do not always make purple.
ONLY a blue-red can make purple when mixed with blue. Now this purple thang has driven many artists from the studio in tears as they sought that perfect purple and only brown would appear!
The best way to make a perfect purple is with Ultramarine-Blue and Rose-Red.
Cadmium red has yellow in it, which is opposite to purple on the color wheel. All opposites make brown remember? Many blues such as "Thalo" (Phthalocyanine) blue have yellow in them, so they can't make pure purple either. No matter how hard they try, they cannot do it.
AAAAAAH Purrrfect Purple, meow.
When we get to the canvas part of the lesson you will see how many gorgeous colors come from just these six colors! When the video is ready over at my Splat! You Tube channel, I'll let you know, it will go into much more detail.
Tints, Shades, Tones, Hue and Color, WHAT is the difference???
Here is a diagram to simplify Tints, Tones and Shades. If you think of white as winter, it sorta rhymes with tint, T is the first letter of the word tones, S is the last word of the word tones and the S stands for SHADES, Its always darker in the shade so this is black. When you mix white and black you get gray. When you mix gray into a color you are toning it.
Here is another simple chart showing hue and color, a hue is the dominant color of a color! That is all there is to it! Now you know the difference between hues, tones, shades, tints, tones and color.
If you want to know how I feel about black, check out my Color Made Simple video on my SPLAT! You Tube Channel which should be coming out soon.
Jane Evershed
Evershed taught her first art class to Zulu children in South Africa in 1982 and her most recent student in Bali Indonesia in 2019. Evershed was invited to be on the New Earth University Art Faculty in 2019. As a young mother Jane found herself with no support so she turned to her art to make a living for her and her children way back in 1986! By the age of 30 she purchased their first home with the money she made from reproducing her art. Jane has been painting for forty years and is now ready to share her painting secrets with you!