Colour Mixing Questions

[nolan]

Ask your top colour mixing questions here and lets see how many I can answer during our live Paint Basket TV show on the 19th July 2011.

[Trudie Niehaus]

I would like a "lesson" on black, as you did the "white" one last week.  Thanks.
Trudie Niehaus

[nolan]

Thanks Trudie, I will be answering that for you.

[Val]

OK this is a bit late perhaps for this week....mixing colours with w/c. I should have taken a picture but never mind. When I was making some  colour wheels for my new paints, I found I even had a bit of bother creating the same colour twice. I have a hard time balancing how much of each to use to get the same colour, plus of course the amount of water affects the outcome. Any tips on this?  I actually got to see about 6 minutes of the newsletter...brilliant!     What a nice surprise to come back to, well done.    You see...I told you  you'd be a movie star one day!     

[Tony (ASM)]

Hi Nolan,
             I'd like to see 'ya cover mixing variations of brown. Also, it'd be nice if you could mix a lilac colour and show 'atmospheric perspective' gradations for distant hills compared to the foreground. Another would be creating skin tones. Then sometime cover gold, bronze, silver and glass colours. 
Thanks
Tony   

[nolan]

thanks for the questions guys, will do my best to cover as many of them as I can

[nolan]

While I'm going back to basics, one inevitable result is unlearning the old habit of mixing by trial and error as you state in one of your videos.  Is there such a thing as a brown color?  Like the great variety seen in wooden furniture?  What about yellow ochre?  Based on a primary color wheel, how would these colors be produced, if one were to avoid using them straight from the tube? As they say, old habits die hard!   Thanks.

Yes browns are all around us. Browns are a special name for Orange's shadow colour. In other words browns are produced by adding the compliment (blue) to orange.

Yellow Ochre is actually Yellow's shadow colour. In other words it is Yellow with purple added

So these tube colours save a lot of mixing time.

[Anya]

I would also love to learn to paint metals, gold, silver, copper, brass also glass. Good suggestion Topdoginuk.

[thegrindre]

You forgot shiny chrome... 

[Val]

This is great Nolan....couple more notes in the book. 

[artluck]

For quite some time I have been intrigued by how dust, mist, fog, smoke etc are rendered in oils, especially in the context of objects that are blurred by these conditions.   I imagine the principles of color mixing for rendering blurred images may require a common approach, save for the colors (dust vs mist for instance) of the blurring agents themselves.  If this aspect of painting could be addressed, it would really help in resolving my long standing mystery on the techniques involved.  Some images from David Shepherd's book "An Artist in Africa" still stand out in the recesses of my memory of the red dust made by a herd of African wildlife, some 30 years since browsing the book, not to mention another masterpice from the master artist Andre Grobler.  I am sure others will benefit as well in advance, Nolan.

[Val]

I agree Artluck.... this would be an excellent subject. I have quite a few photos where there is mist or light rains. Would love to know how to convey this in a painting. (w/c preferred) 

[nolan]

paint it in with transparent washes

[artluck]

paint it in with transparent washes

Forgive my naivete.  But what exactly are transparent washes in oils?  How are they made?

[nolan]

that is when you paint on a very thin layer of paint so that the paint underneath still shines through