My first "professional" paints were the Liquitex set of 5 colors, primary blue, yellow and red, and white and black. At first, that primary red seemed too pink to me and I didn't understand how it could be red when I see pink. Then I came across your video where you explain why magenta is a primary color and not red and it was clearer to me and I accepted magenta as a primary color not red. Then I came across more of your videos on how to mix brown, black, etc. and since then I mostly use only this set and mix all the colors and their shades only with primary colors and color theory. I don't even use black anymore so it just fits in with the other materials. It was harder at first but you learn as you practice. I also have ultramarine blue, cadmium red and burnt sienna for other color variations, but I mostly use primary colors and white (which runs out very quickly hehe). It really helped me learn this trick and it's cheaper for my wallet. One idea for a future video maybe, can you explain in detail what the numbers and letters on the colors mean, like PR170, PV19 on cadmium red or PB15:3 on primary blue, I'm confused about that. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's fun when you realize that you can darken colors without using black. A tube of black paint lasts me a long time-I really only use it when I need large volume of it and I don't feel like mixing it. Anyways, those numbers and letters are pigment codes that identify the pigment(s) that the paint contains. You can Google "Color Index Generic Name Code" if you want to read up on it. PW6 just means Pigment White 6, which is Titanium White. PB means pigment blue and so on. It can help because the color names that manufacturers use aren't standardized, but the pigment codes will reveal which pigments it contains. For example, Aliazrin Crimson varies quite a bit by manufacturers. Thanks for the video suggestion, I might incorporate it into a video in the future.🙂
@@ChrisBreier You should have seen my surprised face when I discovered that I could make brown with colors that aren't brown at all 😁Thanks for the feedback and recommendation, I'll definitely read it because I want to know more about it. I'm waiting for the next videos. Have a nice day 🙂
I started off mixing colors with crayons. 64 colors and as far as I was concerned that was not nearly enough. What would you have said to me I wonder. I can think of a limited pallette in acrylics that would be extremely effective in helping any beginner learn how to mix color. I've yet to see anything close to it be recommended.
There was no such thing as having enough crayons! 🙂 I remember crayons being kind of difficult to blend so I think it would help to have a wider selection of colors to work with.
@ChrisBreier with most crayons as you know you blend mainly by glazing. My first use of oil paints was to mix with modeling clay so I could have intense colors instead of the grayed muck they sold back then. This was well over 60 years ago for me and if they had nice colors with clay back then I never saw any. I learned a heck of a lot about mixing colors with both of those methods well before I ever painted with oil paints and acrylic paints. It made mixing colors in actual painting a heck of a lot easier. My personal want for an expressive and useful acrylic pallette that is comparatively small and covers most of the kinds of colors that anybody would use in any kind of painting would be as follows: titanium white, lemon yellow of artist's choice because there's a heck of a lot of good ones out there, transparent yellow orange diarylide... Pigment yellow 83... Pyrolle red, Rose red quinacridone, anthraqinone red pigment red 177, magenta pigment red 122, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue green shade, phthalo green either shade, carbon black. One could add whatever Earth colors or Mars colors one likes, as well as Nickel azo yellow pigment yellow 150 if the artist wants it. One could make a powerful set of both the warm and cool primaries with these choices without losing the ability to make both natural muted and brilliant colors throughout the entire spectrum. You could easily get by with 8 colors total from the selection I listed, and of course there is plenty of stuff out there to expand the palette as well. It also works very well with oil paints and an amended list can also be used with watercolors. One can get whatever one wants, and some of the lower priced sets of paints have choices that reflect my listings here. I like people to have a choice with what they're doing and the artist can go with limited pallettes at any time they want and learn all kinds of stuff about color mixing. That's my two cents at any rate. I've seen at least one lady put out a pallette of over 50 colors and even I was going like DAYUM! That's a lot of stuff! But it floated her boat! Even with that many colors available there is still a lot of mixing to be done. One of the reasons I talked so much about this subject is because of a number of talented people I know personally who quit doing their art because they couldn't make the colors they wanted. And the colors they wanted were readily available at an art supply store. And that makes me rather sad.
@@BryanJRiolo-q5h With 50 colors on a palette I don't think I would have any room left for mixing! 😀I notice that watercolor artists like to have a lot of colors on their palette. I understand that approach with watercolor though because there are granulating/staining pigments etc. I do think 3 colors is a little limiting but it's a good way to really learn how to mix colors. Then when they gain an understanding of color theory it makes sense to add a few colors. I think your palette of 8 colors is a happy medium. I've had more than one person comment that they had previously given up painting because of color mixing struggles.
@@ChrisBreier she had a very big pallette! And that is not a joke. I don't remember who it is, but trying to reveal who it is here will only be nasty, and be very not constructive. As for learning how to mix colors from only three pigments? What three pigments should they be? I can't think of any that will work with any kind of paint. The closest is cyan, magenta and yellow, but even that leaves a lot of holes in the possibilities, although it is much better than a red blue, an orange red, and a deep yellow. Having both sets of primaries to work with in paint increases the numbers exponentially, but even those don't do the job. By the way, I find you very interesting to talk to in a good way, which is why I would natter on and on like this. But since I could go on and on about mixing colors and having different color effects for many many pages and still hardly touch upon what I know about the subject, while realizing what I know about the subject is a tiny village on a map of the world, I'll give you one of the main reasons why I like to promote at least some of what is possible with what is available to us. Imagine you are having to paint with a very deep blue on a very white surface. You can go from what would be basically black in terms of depth to white, but basically the only colors you will have are blue. Period. How to increase the number of colors? I'll start off the simplest way and that is to add a white to mix with. You will still only get blues, but in the previous way you had to use glazes only, which are wonderful, but not one of the glazed blues will be like your mixed blues. Not one of your mixed blues with white will be like your glazed blues. Nobody who reads this has to believe me; they can try it. And by the way as you can easily understand the kinds of blues you will get with ultramarine blue will not match any of the blues you would get with the old style manganese blue. So using the blues that are available to an artist you would have a tremendous range of possibilities, both glazing and mixing. But you would have no greens. So you add a yellow. All of a sudden what you can mix as far as numbers of colors goes increases exponentially, and that is with only one yellow. Yellows can go anywhere from a yellow orange with a pinkish undertone, to a very greenish lemon yellow. The kind of greens you can get will range all the way from what is basically a gray that is scarcely green in any way whatsoever, to a very bright emerald green that can be anywhere from yellowish to bluish. And this is not counting the possibilities from glazing transparent colors mixing opaque colors to mixing both transparent and opaque colors and everything I have mentioned here has only anything to do with painting by whatever method on a white surface. But now we can add a red 🍒 like a stop sign red. Reds can be very pinkish bluish undertoned to a very yellowish orange undertone, both transparent and opaque. But starting with a stop sign red leaves out brilliant violets and magentas. But all of a sudden even with just that one addition we have colors that couldn't have even been imagined making with any of the previous sets of colors. And I have found that having a decent basis of basic colors to work on and with opens up a tremendous toolbox of possible works of art for any particular artist to create. Does any artist really need all of the possibilities? Hell no! Should they be forced to use all of the possibilities? Hell no! But should the possibilities be hinted at in their training? Should it be at least hinted at that there are a vast number of tools to be used? In my opinion yes. At any rate, especially since I've hardly even covered other types of colors that are available to be bought and used that offer types of colors I have not even mentioned, I think I'll cut it short here. I think of things in a different manner than a lot of people do. Some people look at great possibilities in terms of numbers and despair. I would keep it simple for them. I look at those possibilities and see always new territories to explore in case I want to. In nearly 70 years of doing art, it has kept me from getting bored with doing art in the entirety of well over six decades. It's been really nice talking to you and thank you for listening!
That's a good point about the difference between mixing colors with white compared to glazing with the same color. I think that's why watercolors are so appealing to many artists- the transparent glazes have a brilliance that you can't achieve with opaque colors. Acrylics have the advantage over oils because you can apply numerous glazes in one painting session whereas oils dry so slow I rarely use glazes with oils. I've said in a few videos that I don't think there's such a thing as 3 colors that will allow you to mix a full range of colors. I worked in printing and even though you can produce a range of colors with CMYK there are almost a thousand Pantone colors that you can use to achieve more saturated colors. I feel like it's similar in painting, you can use 3 primary colors but when you want the most saturated orange or turquoise, you can buy a tube of it. The other issue that I touched upon in this video is that while the modern pigments that I used for this painting are very saturated, they're also transparent which can be challenging at times. So I like having opaque versions at my disposal too. The funny thing is that I recommend using a limited palette for learning color mixing but I have a big collection of colors to choose from.
I've learned so much from your tutorials on how to mix colors yourself. Thanks Chris!
I’ve been finding your videos so useful, thanks for sharing!
My first "professional" paints were the Liquitex set of 5 colors, primary blue, yellow and red, and white and black. At first, that primary red seemed too pink to me and I didn't understand how it could be red when I see pink. Then I came across your video where you explain why magenta is a primary color and not red and it was clearer to me and I accepted magenta as a primary color not red. Then I came across more of your videos on how to mix brown, black, etc. and since then I mostly use only this set and mix all the colors and their shades only with primary colors and color theory. I don't even use black anymore so it just fits in with the other materials. It was harder at first but you learn as you practice. I also have ultramarine blue, cadmium red and burnt sienna for other color variations, but I mostly use primary colors and white (which runs out very quickly hehe). It really helped me learn this trick and it's cheaper for my wallet. One idea for a future video maybe, can you explain in detail what the numbers and letters on the colors mean, like PR170, PV19 on cadmium red or PB15:3 on primary blue, I'm confused about that. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's fun when you realize that you can darken colors without using black. A tube of black paint lasts me a long time-I really only use it when I need large volume of it and I don't feel like mixing it. Anyways, those numbers and letters are pigment codes that identify the pigment(s) that the paint contains. You can Google "Color Index Generic Name Code" if you want to read up on it. PW6 just means Pigment White 6, which is Titanium White. PB means pigment blue and so on. It can help because the color names that manufacturers use aren't standardized, but the pigment codes will reveal which pigments it contains. For example, Aliazrin Crimson varies quite a bit by manufacturers. Thanks for the video suggestion, I might incorporate it into a video in the future.🙂
@@ChrisBreier You should have seen my surprised face when I discovered that I could make brown with colors that aren't brown at all 😁Thanks for the feedback and recommendation, I'll definitely read it because I want to know more about it. I'm waiting for the next videos. Have a nice day 🙂
I wish you would have put the painting next to the original picture for comparison! You did really well!
Exercises do exactly what they’re meant to, stretch your mind and strengthen skills!
I started off mixing colors with crayons. 64 colors and as far as I was concerned that was not nearly enough. What would you have said to me I wonder.
I can think of a limited pallette in acrylics that would be extremely effective in helping any beginner learn how to mix color. I've yet to see anything close to it be recommended.
There was no such thing as having enough crayons! 🙂 I remember crayons being kind of difficult to blend so I think it would help to have a wider selection of colors to work with.
@ChrisBreier with most crayons as you know you blend mainly by glazing. My first use of oil paints was to mix with modeling clay so I could have intense colors instead of the grayed muck they sold back then. This was well over 60 years ago for me and if they had nice colors with clay back then I never saw any.
I learned a heck of a lot about mixing colors with both of those methods well before I ever painted with oil paints and acrylic paints. It made mixing colors in actual painting a heck of a lot easier.
My personal want for an expressive and useful acrylic pallette that is comparatively small and covers most of the kinds of colors that anybody would use in any kind of painting would be as follows: titanium white, lemon yellow of artist's choice because there's a heck of a lot of good ones out there, transparent yellow orange diarylide... Pigment yellow 83... Pyrolle red, Rose red quinacridone, anthraqinone red pigment red 177, magenta pigment red 122, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue green shade, phthalo green either shade, carbon black. One could add whatever Earth colors or Mars colors one likes, as well as Nickel azo yellow pigment yellow 150 if the artist wants it.
One could make a powerful set of both the warm and cool primaries with these choices without losing the ability to make both natural muted and brilliant colors throughout the entire spectrum. You could easily get by with 8 colors total from the selection I listed, and of course there is plenty of stuff out there to expand the palette as well. It also works very well with oil paints and an amended list can also be used with watercolors.
One can get whatever one wants, and some of the lower priced sets of paints have choices that reflect my listings here. I like people to have a choice with what they're doing and the artist can go with limited pallettes at any time they want and learn all kinds of stuff about color mixing.
That's my two cents at any rate. I've seen at least one lady put out a pallette of over 50 colors and even I was going like DAYUM! That's a lot of stuff! But it floated her boat! Even with that many colors available there is still a lot of mixing to be done.
One of the reasons I talked so much about this subject is because of a number of talented people I know personally who quit doing their art because they couldn't make the colors they wanted. And the colors they wanted were readily available at an art supply store. And that makes me rather sad.
@@BryanJRiolo-q5h With 50 colors on a palette I don't think I would have any room left for mixing! 😀I notice that watercolor artists like to have a lot of colors on their palette. I understand that approach with watercolor though because there are granulating/staining pigments etc.
I do think 3 colors is a little limiting but it's a good way to really learn how to mix colors. Then when they gain an understanding of color theory it makes sense to add a few colors. I think your palette of 8 colors is a happy medium.
I've had more than one person comment that they had previously given up painting because of color mixing struggles.
@@ChrisBreier she had a very big pallette! And that is not a joke. I don't remember who it is, but trying to reveal who it is here will only be nasty, and be very not constructive.
As for learning how to mix colors from only three pigments? What three pigments should they be? I can't think of any that will work with any kind of paint. The closest is cyan, magenta and yellow, but even that leaves a lot of holes in the possibilities, although it is much better than a red blue, an orange red, and a deep yellow. Having both sets of primaries to work with in paint increases the numbers exponentially, but even those don't do the job.
By the way, I find you very interesting to talk to in a good way, which is why I would natter on and on like this. But since I could go on and on about mixing colors and having different color effects for many many pages and still hardly touch upon what I know about the subject, while realizing what I know about the subject is a tiny village on a map of the world, I'll give you one of the main reasons why I like to promote at least some of what is possible with what is available to us.
Imagine you are having to paint with a very deep blue on a very white surface. You can go from what would be basically black in terms of depth to white, but basically the only colors you will have are blue. Period. How to increase the number of colors? I'll start off the simplest way and that is to add a white to mix with. You will still only get blues, but in the previous way you had to use glazes only, which are wonderful, but not one of the glazed blues will be like your mixed blues. Not one of your mixed blues with white will be like your glazed blues. Nobody who reads this has to believe me; they can try it. And by the way as you can easily understand the kinds of blues you will get with ultramarine blue will not match any of the blues you would get with the old style manganese blue.
So using the blues that are available to an artist you would have a tremendous range of possibilities, both glazing and mixing.
But you would have no greens. So you add a yellow. All of a sudden what you can mix as far as numbers of colors goes increases exponentially, and that is with only one yellow. Yellows can go anywhere from a yellow orange with a pinkish undertone, to a very greenish lemon yellow. The kind of greens you can get will range all the way from what is basically a gray that is scarcely green in any way whatsoever, to a very bright emerald green that can be anywhere from yellowish to bluish. And this is not counting the possibilities from glazing transparent colors mixing opaque colors to mixing both transparent and opaque colors and everything I have mentioned here has only anything to do with painting by whatever method on a white surface.
But now we can add a red 🍒 like a stop sign red. Reds can be very pinkish bluish undertoned to a very yellowish orange undertone, both transparent and opaque. But starting with a stop sign red leaves out brilliant violets and magentas.
But all of a sudden even with just that one addition we have colors that couldn't have even been imagined making with any of the previous sets of colors.
And I have found that having a decent basis of basic colors to work on and with opens up a tremendous toolbox of possible works of art for any particular artist to create.
Does any artist really need all of the possibilities? Hell no! Should they be forced to use all of the possibilities? Hell no! But should the possibilities be hinted at in their training? Should it be at least hinted at that there are a vast number of tools to be used? In my opinion yes.
At any rate, especially since I've hardly even covered other types of colors that are available to be bought and used that offer types of colors I have not even mentioned, I think I'll cut it short here.
I think of things in a different manner than a lot of people do. Some people look at great possibilities in terms of numbers and despair. I would keep it simple for them.
I look at those possibilities and see always new territories to explore in case I want to.
In nearly 70 years of doing art, it has kept me from getting bored with doing art in the entirety of well over six decades.
It's been really nice talking to you and thank you for listening!
That's a good point about the difference between mixing colors with white compared to glazing with the same color. I think that's why watercolors are so appealing to many artists- the transparent glazes have a brilliance that you can't achieve with opaque colors. Acrylics have the advantage over oils because you can apply numerous glazes in one painting session whereas oils dry so slow I rarely use glazes with oils.
I've said in a few videos that I don't think there's such a thing as 3 colors that will allow you to mix a full range of colors. I worked in printing and even though you can produce a range of colors with CMYK there are almost a thousand Pantone colors that you can use to achieve more saturated colors. I feel like it's similar in painting, you can use 3 primary colors but when you want the most saturated orange or turquoise, you can buy a tube of it.
The other issue that I touched upon in this video is that while the modern pigments that I used for this painting are very saturated, they're also transparent which can be challenging at times. So I like having opaque versions at my disposal too. The funny thing is that I recommend using a limited palette for learning color mixing but I have a big collection of colors to choose from.