Painting Island Style

[Val]

  I've learned a new style of     It's very colourful, fairly simple shapes and subjects, and its acrylic! Having never used acrylics I found this quite interesting. Actually I'm quite captivated by it all! NOW...I have hit a stumbling block....  me  me.... it involves colour mixing! No real surprise there is it?!! For this picture I need a solid background colour, they tend to use a lot of violet/purple colour here. Everything I've tried to mix just comes out looking... well...dead.  Any hints would be appreciated...I'm going through what little paint I have at an alarming rate!  All in all, it is really fun and I think I've got a good grasp on mixing my greens!

[dennis]

Val, if you want beautiful violet colours you have to use a cool red and a cool blue. Use Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue for the mix plus white, of course, and depending on the proportions you should get from deep maroon to lovely blue violet. This mix goes very well when painting Irises, etc.

[erika]

Hi Val, perhaps the colour is dead - or flat - cos you need it to be more liquid so you can apply layers??? So try adding some medium to your mix and see what happens?  I've had the same struggle with acrylics (I'm an oil junkie) until I discovered layering - almost in a watercolour method.  Gives more depth to your painting and gets rid of the flatness - but takes more time to acquire the look you want as you build up the layers.  Hope the rant helps he-he 

[nolan]

I second Dennis's advice - mix using two cool colours, you won't get violet / purple with cadmium red, then again you could always go buy a violet and tune it from there too if you are battling too much

[Val]

Thank you all for your quick replies. I'm still struggling a bit with my 'warm/cool' colour wheel.    For some reason the blues give me exactly that...the blues    ! I'll give it another go, I am determined to  lick this problem! If all else fails, I'll go to town next week and see what is available premixed...hate to give in. mumble mumble   

[nolan]

never give in 
post a sample of the colour you want and a list of the reds and blues you have and let's see what we can do Val

[dennis]

Be patient, I have made a short mixing vid on the purples for you and will post it very soon. Just waiting for my Composition Bonus vid to finish rendering.

[Val]

The Blues are: Pthalo Blue, Blue Lake
The Reds are:  Crimson, Brilliant Red

Rather limited at this point as I received these as part of a set as a gift. Quality is not especially good but most of the colours aren't too bad. Will put patches of colour and post them later. Moving boat back to Prickley Bay this morning.

Might make it in to town later and see what they have.

[nolan]

hmm, crimson and pthalo blue seem your best bet at this stage Val

In an ideal world you would have magenta - that always makes nice violets

[Kelley]

Hmm. I'm going to have to look again at my tubes to see what colours I really have available.