Friday, May 7, 2010

Mixing Exercise 20

Exercise 20 - The complementary pair, blue and orange, with mixed bright orange and violet-blue. Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Scarlet, and French Ultramarine.


These mixes came out with a good deal more browns and grays than illustrated in the book's example. I like mine better. :-) (I think my orange may have been mixed a bit more towards red than yellow.)

2 comments:

  1. That palette is very appealing. The orange looks nicely orange, not terribly red -- I think it's just the different behaviour of different pigments on the paper. Interesting how here you have two quite opaque colours of similar power and so the dark/thick mixes show the range better than the paler washes. In other mixes, the secondaries and greys displayed much better with more water.

    It's interesting (again) how paint has very different 'particle' properties and textures from colour to colour. I'm finding that cerulean is quite fluffy, with large particles; it sits on the top of unglazed ceramic and pushes around while phthalocyanine watercolour, much more of a dye than a pigment in its behaviour, sinks in and stains.

    I think someone commented before on the opacity and 'heft' of cadmiums. Ultramarine is quite weighty too.

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  2. Your comment reminds me that I must take into considerations the properties of each unique pigment. That Cerulean certainly has a mind of it own, quickly falling out of mix. I stir it all up and in no time it's giggling, "Here I am again!" I guess those large particles fall out of suspension so easily.

    I like reading handprint.com for good details of individual pigment performance. Oh Katharine, there is so much to learn... And that's just the way I like it. :-)

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