How to mix color, Value, Harmony, paint with a limited palette primary colors

you in my lessons I always start off students a certain way and remember how we always start off my classes and I go everything I'm going to tell you isn't true and then I go talk about a color thing and immediately students all of a sudden take that rule about everything that isn't true all of a sudden like that's the truth now and so I will tell them something about it and then like three months later or three weeks later and sometimes three classes later they are literally going off on their own and then they're wondering why they're having a problem and so I just want to kind of go over certain things and I also came up with an interesting question so so one of my students asked me what's the differences in white and oftentimes I think I'll tell one class something and oftentimes students that come in that are new aren't listening on so I just wanted to kind of go over a little bit about the theory of color and also what makes whites different and what whites you should be working with which is a question that I don't think I even cover with my beginning students so everything in the world can be created out of three colors red yellow and blue those are called primary colors the reason why they're called primary colors is that you cannot make those colors now most people will call them primary colors because they think all those three colors make all of the other colors but you need those three colors and even today and I told this to one of the students earlier I said I'm not going to be picking on you during our talk because I have students do this every week and that is I'll come to their painting and I'll go where's your color and they go well and I'll say well it needs more gray it needs more blue and then I'll walk off and I'll come back again and the paintings still Brown and I go why isn't it gray and I look at their palette and they have like blue and brown out and I'm like going you can't do anything with that you know the primary color the reason why we call them primary colors is that you need at least that and I know a lot of teachers that have they will be so upset that if they come and give you a list of colors that they want for their class and you are not prepared if you show up for class and though and you don't have alizarin crimson because he requested it that they will ignore you the rest of the workshop they figure if you can't even show up with the basics then you really shouldn't be in this class even if you're paying for it I know teachers that are like that I'm not but you do always want to have a red yellow and blue and the red yellow and blue that we use in our classes alizarin crimson cobalt blue and at yellow medium sometimes CAD yellow light but those are the three colors when you start a class you should have those three colors on your palette and I'm always amazed that students are painting for an hour an hour and a half and they don't have any readout they don't have any blue out and they haven't even gone into the the bother of making a black because the black that we use is made out of the three neutral colors now even if you're going to use a black and this came up in class today some artists do use black they don't make a neutral color but black is an awesome color and it can be used for an effect so for instance you can create a wonderful color painting with three colors and then let's say you're doing a portrait and you really want to get a black beret on your subject you want that flesh color to go against some that is so luscious that's a good instance to put black in okay black that comes out of a tube ivory black which used to be made out of human charred bones believe it or not but that black is best when it's used when you mean something black in nature we don't see black there isn't black out there they're variations of color and how we see color is that color comes out of the sky in red yellow and blue okay so your three primary colors and we know this because if you put a prism down and you look at the rainbow that it causes we clearly see those colors now there are some philosophies that they say well the yellows are green and all of a sudden don't worry about that this is just theory and everybody thinks color theory is so complicated I think a lot of times because the word theory is attached to color painting with getting colors are simple if you ask yourself five questions you can create any color in the world okay the five questions are the color that I'm trying to mix and match does it need more red in it second question does the color that I'm trying to match need more blue in it those are two separate questions they're not yes I need to add a little bit of both you separately have to ask yourself these questions as you go along I do the same thing when I look at your palette I look at your palette and I ask myself does that color right there need some red in it does it need some blue in it or does it need some yellow in it separate three questions does it need to be lighter or doesn't need to be darker five questions if you go and ask yourself those five questions you will figure out the color that is missing it's interesting that you can give the our suggestion right now and say I want you to pretend that you're looking at the world through a yellow filter and all of a sudden everything that's yellow right now looks yellow that you'll see the yellow in it if I say right now I went to look for red always in your eyes we'll focus on everything that's red and you'll look at a face think oh my god now I see the Reds in it because you've isolated those colors the way that the the brain works with all this is like it's almost like you're mixing colors as you go along so you want to make sure that you always have the three primary colors and ask yourself those five questions now we use white which is part of the conversation that we will talk about later and the black that i recommend using is the black that you make out of your three primary colors which is a neutral now most students do not go through the baller mixing black and when I asked them why not they go it's too hard the thing that I want to stress is that painting is not easy at least fine painting in fact it is so difficult what you guys are doing is so difficult that we house what you guys do in major buildings throughout the world we fly to Paris to go to the Louvre we go to shows like Monet and Sargent and some of us will spend thousands of dollars for an opportunity to go see somebody else creating what you guys do that's how extraordinary what you do is the white doesn't everybody do it because it's not easy it's easy to get an effect but to create art is difficult we have we hold people in esteem that can actually create fine art and when we think about going to the Louvre we don't think about seeing a bunch of paintings of you watercolors or pastels we actually are anticipating seeing oil paintings and lots of them and if we went to the show and we went to the Louvre and there were no oil paintings there we would truly miss them that's how absolutely extraordinary what you guys do in the context of the world so what this is not an easy thing but in the process of creating your black you will start getting good at mixing your colors you will find out how much red you need as opposed to how much blue and what's really important with paint is the tinting strengths how strong it color is over another and in the process of mixing black you realize that alizarin crimson is really quite strong in tinting strengths as opposed to cobalt blue now a little bit about the history of colors is that when you go and you buy a tube of color back in the olden days this would be real so if you bought a tube of cobalt blue it would be real mineral it will be ground cobalt it will be ground to perfection artists would have people sitting in the workshop working with chunks of rock and they'd be grinding that rock grinding it until it becomes a fine powder and then they would mix into that linseed oil so what you're actually painting is with dirt and linseed oil the linseed oil is what makes it stick okay that's what dries so if you're in the if you're in the garage and you get a drop of linseed oil on the garage floor and you leave it alone it actually will form a seal on it and eventually we'll get rock-hard okay that's what causes paint to stay now in watercolor they take that same ground cobalt that same mineral and they had gone Arabic to it and gum arabic which is a water-based paint that's what makes that stick onto paper so they're exactly the same product so watercolors and oils have a lot of similarities about the how they're actually made but the problem is with using a mineral is that nowadays minerals are very expensive so when you go to an art store you'll see a little tiny tube like this of cobalt blue and in some brands that cobalt blue will cost you a hundred and fifty dollars and then you go over to Michael's and then they have a big tube of Coco blue and they're for 17 dollars you can buy Coco blue and use it freely okay because it only cost you $17 million it or no mineral in it what this basically is when you buy from Michael's these large tubes is that it's ground marble dust it's powder and they had a dye to it so it's the dye that's cobalt blue that they add to the marble desk that you're actually painting with and then they add what linseed oil okay so what you're buying is powder dye and linseed oil in these tubes now tripping cheaper paints use less of the marble because the marble is more expensive than the oil so they use less of the marble and so you have different varieties and we're going to what's the difference between when we're looking at whites because there's a lot of options there can you tell the difference between pure cobalt blue mined and Italy by garvey months off the you know the French coast or somewhere like that ground by you know limps and a workshop somewhere and added with oil can you tell the difference then you can with the Michael too absolutely not for all intensive purposes buy an expensive paint isn't a good value a lot of really great artists and I'm not going to name any but I've looked into their into their boxes they have Windsor Newton Michaels big tubes of it in fact I know some artists that don't only get it in tubes they get them in buckets and they put the paint into cocking guns and they'll squeeze out painted in a cocking gun because they're doing big paintings in fact one painting at one painter at the convention the plein air convention that's how he works and we as artists were entertained by him because who would think that you would you would use a cocking gun and this guy sells his paintings for lots of money you would think that the collectors would go oh no that's like against that's not there's no romance in it I use old Colin because I'm a snob because I feel that I'm in touch with Rembrandt in some odd way because the paint comes from there so I do spend and the thing is my theory paints are very cheap even if you paid a hundred and fifty dollars for a tube of paint it's one of the cheapest things that you can buy in your life and I can prove that because all of you have gone out to dinner and a lot of you have spent with you and your husband and maybe a guest a hundred or 150 dollars for a meal in a nice place and where did that end up the next day you could spend a hundred dollars for a tube of paint and this tube of paint will last in some incidences a year two years some colors will ask you to use the rest of your painting life the pleasure that a tube of paint provides you is endless and the gift that a tuba paint gives Society for hundreds of years far outweighs the initial investment this is not where it's expensive if you're going to put money into things that make a difference by good brushes brushes are the thing that take the paint off the palette into your brain and onto your canvas they are the thing that most of you don't put money into and they're the things that make the biggest difference of all so if you're going to invest in any art supplies you want to invest in the brushes and I mean good quality and then the brushes need to be taken care of first thing oil painting brushes are always long handled and when people come in for oil painting classes from classes they've taken I have nothing but short handle little things that they picked up as a gift they're great grandkid went to Michael's and they feel like these these little sets where you have you know six for $5 when you pay $1 for a brush you're buying $1 brush when you're spending $60 for a brush you're getting $60 worth of brush how you work with them and when you work there with them is really crucial because if you take a $60 brush on to a blank canvas and you start smearing paint on it that blank canvas is like sandpaper and it will just rub a sable brush down to nothing but a $60 brush when you're putting the soft Rouge on a portrait on top of layers of oil painting might be just the thing you need and a lot of students will wonder why can't I paint and I'll look at their brushes and I go where you have nothing to paint with I see sticks with no hair on them and I've got I've got a secret for you guys okay this is the best-kept secret in the world a brush with no hair is a stick okay you can't paint with a stick well you can some ways you could fit but the thing is its it pays to have good hair on there you start off oil paintings predominantly with bristle brushes because the surface is like sandpaper as you go along you can start going in disables sable brushes are nice I know some artists that don't own sable brushes at all they believe oil painting brushes our hog hair brushes when they should be well-kept I personally love the flats the long flats and there the longer bristle brush flats because if I use that flat well and I've taken it and taking care of it over a period of time it turns into a filbert brush which is the curved one okay so I don't have to buy the ones that look like they've been well-worn I just wear out my brushes and take good care of them a filbert brush used enough will end up into a bright you'll actually wear the brush down until it's short and then further than a bright it becomes a stick and I know some people take great honor and keeping a brush for the rest of their life but there is no great honor those brushes need to be sharp tanned honed and and ready for action okay so brushes are your investment not your paints your paints are cheap and the big thing canvases the surface of your canvas makes more is more value it shows more at the finished product than your paints so buy an expensive paints within reason because you have to remember well go into this right now you have to remember that the cheapest thing that they can put into paint as oil and if you don't have enough pigment in your paints that pigments are what we do we put paint on a canvas we are paint appliers we're not water colorist we're painters and so we need paint you don't paint a house with a roller that has nothing on it you saturate and when you get to the bottom of the pan with your roller what happens as you go across the wall it becomes difficult it becomes sticky it becomes not something that you want to do you like it when it's fresh when it Phil it's nice and juice and you go across the wall well that's how paint should feel like you should be putting paint on the canvas and we love it when we look at a Rembrandt where the paint is just brushy wonderful on a canvas so it's very important to try to to to get that paint is here for us to put onto the canvas and a lot of you when you start off a painting will put little dabs of paint on their palate as if that little dab of paint is so valuable we just went through it didn't cost you much but yet there's red there's blue abbondanza is the word if you squeeze a lot out you almost feel compelled to use it that's a good way if your pains are not going anywhere maybe squeeze out more paint maybe you need more paint on the canvas I can tell you a lot of times I walk around get get more paint on that canvas you don't even know what the possibility is until you've got three big huge layers of paint on there because then mixing on the canvas which is okay I highly recommend mixing on the canvas as opposed to your palette but there is all kinds of possibilities of how colors come together on the canvas with your brush that makes interesting effects so don't be stingy also one of the biggest mistakes that students do why I have no idea I don't think any of you really lived in the 30s maybe some of you may have been born then but your parents kind of instill this oh you don't want to waste anything right and I have students that I think have been with me for a year and I think every week they have transferred their alizarin crimson that they first used from the first class from palette the palette to palette so they spent why because for a couple of reasons one you always want to start off with a fresh sheet and the reason for this the reason for this is because you'll have a little mound of alizarin crimson that you feel oh I've got to protect that don't touch my alizarin crimson okay then I come along and I go oh we need a little bit of Rouge on that face there let me use that sixty dollar brush that you have right there and I'm unaware that that that alizarin crimson has been there since the beginning of your classes and I pick up that $60 brush disables that are handmade in Ireland from Russian kolinsky animals that gave their life they don't shade them they kill them then they harvest the fur and somebody meticulously shows all those together they they I take that brush that was made by some poor old woman in some place with big glasses because she's going and she hand assembled this $60 brush and that's how they make them I take it I grab it I stick it into your alizarin crimson and all of a sudden I have just ruined your brush because I assume that the alizarin crimson was ready not only that it's sitting there on your pallet you go well you said you got to have radio on blue there's my red it's like no it's not it's a big hard pile of something but it's not funny when paint dries out it's no longer paint it becomes hard and it's useless always start up then students go well you know my colors are a little muddy and I go really and I look at their palettes and I go well there's the copra right there every color you have has every color in it and everything's smeared all over the place not to mention all of the oil that is seeked all over the place you have got to always start off with a fresh palette you can end in and it's not unusual that professional artists like richard schmidt it's not unusual for him to actually take all the paint off of his kit his palette half way through a two hours segment and re squeeze them on because the cad yellow or the lemon yellow or the green has got brushstrokes of red and blue in them and then when he needs to get a little pure color there's no way he can work around all of that so he'll take everything off and he'll lay everything back on again I'll go I need some yellow because this is no longer they go well it's getting close to the end of class I don't know scrape some of that off push it over I don't want to open my tube anymore a lot of the things you guys do sabotage your work and you're laughing because we do all of your guilty this is not this all of you're guilty of that okay White's getting to my question under white you have a lot of whites and you stand up and the question is so what white do I use if I'm going to go to the store we've already agreed that we you don't need to go buy expensive paints sofa sorry Williamsburg paints sorry you know I hate to say this but you're way overpriced and yeah you know some people will say you could tell the difference but for most intensive purposes buy brushes so you go down and they have flake white zinc white titanium white titanium sink they have creme it's white what are the differences in white and why should I care Pramila do I use Pro Melba or not why do people use Pro mama well the thing with white is that when you were buying white you want to have a white that is balanced with titanium and zinc now let me tell you a little thing about the differences in white flake white which is a lead-based white a lot of people stay away from it because they see the word lead these days you're only going to get a little poisoning if you smear your paint on top of your still life and then eat it okay the amount the little amount of toxins that are in your paints are hardly anything and compared to what you're breathing as you're sitting at a stoplight okay you're inhaling LED all the time our bodies can process it in fact I was so leery at one point about using lead I went to my doctor and I could have a lead test and he goes why I go because I work with lead paints I want to know and he said move the effects of lead only matter in children they have very little or no effect on the adult brain so you don't really need to worry in the amount that we use I said well do it anyway I was perfectly fine and considering I bathe in this stuff a lot I wasn't affected so I'm sure a lot of people will you know counter that but that is the science on it so flake white is a lead-based white it's warm it's also transparent flake white yeah so flake white is a warm transparent white it is a really warm and transparent and consequently it's not a really good highlighter creme it's white is a flake white with more quality more lead in it so if you want a warm white and it's a color that a lot of the old masters used it's it's got its purpose zinc white on the other end of spectrum is a very cold transparent white it is very flexible it's great for glazing the issue with it is because of its transparency and there's going to be an important word at this point because we're going to talk about why you want to buy a white with substance is because zinc white is so transparent and so flexible it's hard to put quantities on and we know by looking at the old masters that the thicker the paint the brighter it appears so what we want to do is we want to make sure that we have a good white that's neutral and that would be titanium white titanium white is a good neutral color but the problem with titanium white is that it is brittle titanium white is brittle and so consequently they add zinc white so most of the time when you're buying titanium white which is the white that you use you'll find that in primeira and all of the other soft mixing whites and all of the things that you see out there pretty much that's titanium white and if you look in the ingredients for the most part you'll see zinc in there and the zinc's in there because zinc is flexible and that flexibility um causes the titanium to be a little bit more fluid so you want to make sure that you have titanium white and zinc mixed together not only that zinc tends a titanium tends to be a little on the warm side the zinc white tends to be a little bit on the cool side the two of them make the brightest white there is so titanium white now the differences in qualities and paints we know that we want to have when we go to the paint store and buy paints for ourselves we want to make sure that our investment is a good one and so we will go and we will look at all of the different titanium white and you have soft mixing soft mixing one south mixing two you know I don't think Rembrandt ever worried about whether or not his whites were soft mixing he needed white and he also needed white that would stand up we also know by looking at these great works is that the thicker the paint the brighter it appears now when they manufacture paint remember I told you how they manufacture it it's dirt of some kind marble dust or some kind of substance and they have oil added to it now when they make Pramila they take two stones and they rub them together like this and the paint is put into the center of the stone and it is ground and some grinders go this way some of them grind this way the stuff that comes out first the liquid stuff the stuff that that is in primo bah that's the stuff that oozes out first it has titanium and the reason why it's such a good seller for our companies is because it feels like cold cream it's very soft it's very flexible it's kind of like a no-nonsense white so you could put it on your pallet and you're set and I was like you don't have to add any medium to it but the problem is is that because it's kind of willy-nilly the first of all the paint that comes out it has all of the oils in it it kind of reacts like at the end of a hot fudge sundae you know how the bottom of a hut fund send these tastes at the end you know it's all of that mixture in there that's what's happening to your painting so chances are if you're getting muddy paintings you're using a soft mix tube of white and it's causing a hot fudge sundae cook on your palate okay and it's really hard to take something that's kind of fluid and Placid like that and put it onto your canvas and make a highlight you want to have thick paint you want the paint that's in the middle where all of the good stuff is when all of this so like the first stuff is your Pamela and your soft mixed stuff and then it grinds some more and then right in there you've got your student grade the paints and so you might have the Michael's quality and you know it's mixed it's good it's got enough in it but the stuff you want is in the middle that's where all the good stuff is that's what the paint that you want and so you want to make sure that you're buying a high-end white if you're going to spend money for for paint your high-end white is what you want to do so invest in a high-end white that's to a titanium and zinc white don't pass over the perm Elvis pass over the soft mixing paints you only need one tube don't worry about getting three different kinds of white you will not run into any problems that way any questions yeah what about produces a titanium unleash you know it's a color I could put that one bleached white onto your palette and I can mix it I can figure out does it need more red more yellow more blue doesn't need to be lighter or darker if I ask myself those five questions I can make unbleached white same thing with brilliant yellow light I can mix that to all colors can be made out of the three colors so if you want to carry around sixty tubes of paint by all means and if you've got money to spend it's funny these people who say oh god painting so expensive I can't believe the price of paint and I look at their their tackle box and they've got 200 tubes in there and not only that if you're playing our painter if you are a plein air painter how are you going to haul all that stuff with you paints are very heavy I mean it seems much more obvious that if you only need four tubes of paint voilá okay so you can create everything out of just those few these little other colors you can actually create but I guarantee you the emphasis is on other things than whether or not you get that special color and when you go shopping there are colors that you need there are colors out there like you cannot create a cat red out of alizarin crimson and Cadden medium okay your cad medium yellow you're not going to be able to get a bright flyer engine red and if you're a planar painter I want you to ask yourself this question how often do you paint a firetruck in your payments you will not find in nature these really luscious colors and I would say a lot of the colors that you buy you end up tinting down because they don't make sense in in reality so you might buy a really beautiful bright color but it won't fit into a plainer painting you'll have to dull it somehow and in the process of dulling that you probably could have achieved that color by two other means that made sense any questions you

Channel: Stefan Baumann

Views: 260,395

Rating: 4.8575702 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, Palette, Paint (Visual Art Medium), Color (Quotation Subject), Color, Value, Harmony, Limited Palette, Stefan Baumann, Color Wheel, Mixing Paint, oil painting, how to

Id: 9sAr9B7nKRs

Length: 36min 34sec (2194 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 22 2015