COLOR THEORY - My Ideal Palette and Color Mixing Strategies for realistic Colors

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this new video in this episode we're going to talk about cutter pigments and i'm going to share with you my ideal palettes and also we are going to see some strategies that i use to create realistic cutters all right so i'm going to share with you my ideal palette of course these pigments are those that i use the most and that i find to be the most useful and that i have really the best feeling with a lot of time it's really about the feeling that how you feel when you use this pigment because it's not just about the color it's also about the handling properties the drawing time the transparency and all these things but well maybe those pigments will not be the one for you but at least i'm going to try to explain why i love them so much and then i'm going to show you my mixing strategies and i chose these pigments because they are all around the color wheel and this is a very important thing by the way if you want to download this picture you can go to my website on the resources for artist page and you can download it for free it's a simple pdf you just have to click download and you can get the picture and you can simply use it to make your own pad choices all right so like i said if i want to mix a little bit of everything i want to have all the potential on my palette it's not going to be necessary every time but i i need to be capable of mixing a bright magenta or a very strong green or a very strong orange or whatever so i need to have pigments that kind of circle around the entire color wheel and i really want to have the widest spectrum covered so i need a good red i need a good yellow i need a good green i need a good cyan i need a good blue and a good magenta all right the white that i prefer is titanium white this is the best white hands down i mean you don't have a lot of whites zinc white is a little bit too weak for me and i don't really like using it titanium white is very chalky very strong as in terms of white it's very opaque it's very white and it's kind of a it has a cool tendency to it so it's more on the cool side and a lot of people don't like titanium white that much but i don't see how you can use something else there is flake white or lead white but well where i live it's completely impossible to find because of the regulations because lead oxide is considered to be a toxic substance so that has been banned from most paints and you can't find it easily so it's almost impossible to find so i don't even try like don't think that lead white is going to bring something like extremely beneficial it's a good white don't get me wrong it's a good white it has good properties especially the drying time and the consistency is great it's very pleasant to paint with since it's not available in my country i don't see why i should like buy it from abroad and have it shipped to me it just because it's so white i can paint perfectly well with anything any white zinc white i don't use because i find it to be a little bit too weak and not white enough so this is why i prefer to use titanium white and by the way most of the titanium whites that you can find are actually mixtures of titanium and zinc so you get just the right consistency and usually they're very good and i like them they're decent enough next you have yellow ochre which is what i use the most py42 this is the synthetic yellow ochre uh not the natural one and if i need something a little bit more yellow i'm gonna use something like cadmium yellow now i know this there's this big controversy about cadmiums if you don't want to use cadmium just use benzemida yellow for example which is often called permanent yellow or cadmium yellow substitute or cadmium yellow hue and it's going to be just working exactly the same way it's a little bit less opaque less strong but it's going to work perfectly fine after that a pigment that i use really really a lot of the time is transparent red oxide i really love this pigment i find it to be one of the most useful ones for flesh tones sometimes you can see it under the name transparent burnt sienna it's actually the same pigment it's pr101 it's iron oxide but this one the fact that it's transparent makes it very useful for skin tones for the red i use cadmium red again if you don't want to use any cadmium you can use pyrrole red pr254 and it's going to work just as well i think even like the cadmium or it's going to be regulated very severely in the eu for example so it might be a good option to consider right now because i think if you live in the eu soon there's going to be some restrictions around the use of cadmiums it's not like official yet but i think that they are sort of investigating the thing so it might be a good idea to start switching immediately to pyrrole red because like in the future who knows it might be just like lead it might be considered like too bad for painters again paint safely if you need to learn about oil painting safety it's also on my resources for artists i made a video about painting safely for artists just don't have food around don't eat around your paint don't use your fingers don't put anything in your mouth and you're gonna be fine with cadmium or anything but if they want to put regulations and forbid us to use these things we have alternatives which is why the the color wheel system is great because you can have like various options for the same color it's just like for the red you have several options you have multiple pigments at your disposal you don't just need this very specific one whatever i use is just based on where it sits around the color wheel but if i need to use something else i'm going to use something else i don't care if they ban cadmium i don't care i just use something else and it's going to work just as well as far as magenta goes i use a quinacridone rose you can also use quinacridone magenta pv19 they work really well you can substitute that for a an alizarin crimson for example like so more of the traditional pigments a little bit more on the dark side and a little bit more on the red side but it's going to work just the same way and as far as the blue goes i use ultramarine blue this baby i would never trade it for anything in the world it's the greatest color i think that i can find it so dark and intense and strong is brightly transparent but it's dark at the same time and i also love this baby this is cobalt steel blue if you know me you know that i love this color it's um it's a little bit expensive of course but i use it very sparingly just a touch of it from time to time it's a very very useful cutter because it's a cyan and you need a sign if you don't have a sign there's an entire part of your collar wheel that's completely missing and you're missing an entire part of the color spectrum so if you think that you can just use yellow and blue to mix everything in this part right here in this entire part of the spectrum you're going to miss a lot of chromatic power because this one is bright and it's strong in color so it's going to allow you to create a lot of variety especially in the greens in the blue range you can mix it with a lot of things and it's going to help you a lot far as green goes i generally like to use what i consider to be the best example of like pure green and not green mixed out of yellow and blue like many people think uh i can do that i i often do that as well if i need something dull something like you know for vegetation this this green i'm not going to use it necessarily to paint like foliage or trees and stuff because it's too green but it's what i consider the primary green see and this is a phthalo green yellow shade pg-36 it's a very good green it's a very very strong pigment so i don't use it that much actually uh like from time to time it's good to have it around just in case and of course the pigments that i use the most probably after white is burnt umber i really really love this pigment you have the real burnt umber which dries very fast which is something that i use a lot especially in the earliest layers of the painting so for example i'll use a lot of burnt umber for the underpainting because i know that it's going to dry fast and for the subsequent layers i'll use less and less if possible if you don't want to use this fast drying action of the burnt umber you can also use a substitute which is a mix of black and and iron oxide which is this one and it looks exactly the same but it dries a lot slower so it will maybe help you build those layers optional pigments that you can also use ivory black pbk9 of course a great pigment slow drying can cause issues during the drying process so most of the time i try to create my own black out of burnt umber and ultra in blue but it's also a good idea to have some ivory black around just in case another pigment that i often use is permanent alizarin crimson the traditional alizarin crimson is not light fast so i don't recommend that you use it but you have some great modern substitutes for that another pigment that i can recommend but it's more optional is venetian red a super helpful and concentrated pigment that can bring a lot of variety in the orange red yellow rain alright so now let me explain a little bit about my color mixing strategy whenever i paint i try to always prioritize values so you'll see that my palette is organized so that i have several values i usually try to have the highlights which is the lightest color of them all i also try to have some mid-tones and some shadows so right here for example if i want to paint a white object which is this white piece of fabric here i'm going to try to have a mixture for the highlights a mixture for the halftones or the local color depending and a mixture for the shadows and this is how i work i always try to give the priority to the values and this is the most important thing that you can do if you want to achieve realistic cuts prioritize values and speaking about giving the priority to values the color wheel system that you can download from my website is also centered on value because for each of the hues it gives you a value scale that you can use directly now of course you're going to have to use some more chromatic mixtures so here for example to mix this jar of powder which contains phthalo green powder i'm going to use some of my colors again and see this is the same strategy i also try to have like various values i adjust with blue i adjust with phthalo green i adjust with a touch of of cobalt blue cyan until i have the right values but more importantly what i try to do is have the right colors for the shadows have the right cutter for the mid tones and have the right cutter for the highlights you don't have to mix three tones like this all the time you can mix more you can mix less what's important is that you always keep in mind that what matters for painting realistic objects is not necessarily the hue what matters is not what pigments exactly you use because you can reach the same type of appearance with a lot of different pigments what matters most is how you match the values of your model with the values that you are capable of mixing on your palette now for every single mixture there is no order that i need to follow hue value and chroma in this order if you keep this order uh you'll see that will simplify your color mixing approach if you don't remember what chroma value and who are these are the fundamental dimensions of cutter and i talked in great depth about those in my previous uh kind of mixing videos so i encourage you to have a look it's on youtube this order is really the main structure that i use for color mixing whenever i have a doubt it's not something that i do mechanically it's more something that's like you know somewhere in my head i know that if i need to choose whenever i need to mix a single sample of color i know that it should be hue first and then value and then adjust the chroma when painting complex objects like this one you can see that this palette this go-to palette that i have allows me to mix a little bit of everything really i can mix most of the colors because i chose pigments that are ideally located all around the color wheel and i'm not limiting my myself to i don't know red yellow and blue for example which is missing a whole lot of areas around the wheel so by keeping in mind that i need to use several pigments if i want to have the greatest diversity in terms of cutter and the greatest degree of variety and the greatest chromatic potential for all the colors that i mix by keeping this in mind i'm capable of mixing realistic colors from all over the spectrum and i can really circle around the wheel if i have a doubt if i need another pigment i can always refer to my color wheel again and find a new pigment that i can add to complement the others all pigments have their limitations it might be limitations in drying time it might be that they are not colorful enough it might be that they are not bright enough it might be that they are too dark so you have to really switch around and you should never be afraid to have multiple pigments sometimes this or this pigment will work and sometimes it will not work because i don't know it maybe it's too transparent maybe it dries too slowly or yeah you know for whatever reason a pigment might not be the right one or a specific thing that you need to paint so it's always a good idea to have multiple options at your disposal and i really hope that this color wheel can help people decide and see what are the advantages of most of the most frequently used pigments all right that's it that's my go-to palette let me know what pigments you use most of the time in the comments below i'm really curious about this and remember that you can download the carter wheel system if you want it's on my website it's free so you can just get it and find the right payments for you and if you want to learn more of course you also have my oil painting course the art and practice of color you'll find the links in the description below as well all right thank you very much for watching this video and i'll see you for the next one and until then have fun painting bye you

Channel: Florent Farges - arts

Views: 128,605

Keywords: oil painting, painting, classical art, atelier, art, arts, techniques, tutorial, how to, beginner, oil paint, drawing, inspiration, motivation for artists, step by step, color theory, color, colour, palette, titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, transparent red oxide, ultramarine blue, burnt umber

Id: Zbs6sQlKY18

Length: 17min 53sec (1073 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020