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COLOR
Part II - Color Exercises

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Contents 

Full Palette Grid 

Mixed Grays

Two-color Series

Three-color Series

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It is useless to even think about sophisticated color mixing unless we know what each of our colors looks like and how they act upon one another in mixtures. A few exercises will help give you that knowledge. Use a palette knife to measure out and mix the paints if you are an oil or acrylic painter. Watercolor artists will necessarily use a brush.

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Exercise 1: Full Palette Grid

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Combine each color on your palette with each of the other colors, plus add white to each of the resulting mixtures as follows. Make a chart similar to the one shown, except set it up to for the particular colors you use. Fill the upper half of each square with a 50-50 blend of two colors (in a few cases, the blend will consist of a color mixed with itself, such as cadmium red plus cadmium red, as in the first square of the illustration). The lower half of a square is to be covered with the 50-50 blend mixed with an equal amount of white paint or, if you are a watercolor artist, increase the amount of water in the paint.

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Exercise 2: Mixed Grays  

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Create a series of mixed grays. Set up three rows of approximately 1" boxes, with three boxes in each row. Each row of boxes represents a pair of complementary colors: red + green, orange + blue, and violet + yellow (oil and acrylic painters must add a little white paint to each mixture so that it results in a gray instead of a black). Using the red + green combination as an example, proceed as follows:

1. Combine some red, green, and white paint (or water instead of white if you are a watercolor artist), carefully adjusting the amounts of red and green until the mixture appears to be gray. Fill the center box of the first row with this mixture.
2. Divide the remaining gray paint into two piles. Add to one pile a tiny amount of red so that it becomes ever so slightly reddish. Paint this into the box at left.
3. To the gray paint that is left over, add a bit of green to make a greenish-gray and fill in the box at right.

Try this exercise again using different reds, greens, oranges, and so on.

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Exercise 3: Two-color Series

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Learn what happens when colors are combined in varied proportions by following these instructions:

1. Label a sheet of heavy paper at the top with the name a color you use regularly (call this the "base color", cadmium red in the illustration). Make a separate sheet for each color you regularly use.
   
2. Draw 1” wide strips, with each strip divided into 9 segments labeled with % amounts as you see above. Make as many strips as the number of colors you normally use, minus one for the "base color," so that you can pair up all your pigments with one another. (i.e. If you've 12 colors, make 11 strips.)
   
   
3. Fill the segment of each strip labeled "100%" with the base color (cadmium red in the illustration), and the "0.0 %" segment with another color (French ultramarine in the top strip in the picture). Apply the colors solidly and at their full intensity; a palette knife works best.
   
   
4. With a palette knife, mix the two colors together in approximately equal amounts and fill the central square (labeled 50%). Mix a large enough quantity so that you have some left over for the steps that follow.
   
   
5. Combine the 50% mixture with an equal amount of 100% color (cadmium red) and fill the 75% square with the new mixture.
   
   
6. Then, mix the 50% color with an equal amount of the 0.0% color (French ultramarine) to paint the 25% section. Do the remaining squares in the same way.

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Exercise 4: Three-color Series

Repeat Exercise 3, but with a twist: add a third color. Make the cadmium red/French ultramarine blue strip, for instance, but by first having added a tiny bit of cadmium yellow or some other hue to the red and blue. (Begin by making two large piles of paint on your palette, one being mostly cadmium red with a little cadmium yellow added, and the other mainly ultramarine blue with some cadmium yellow mixed in.) Create another red-blue strip, only this time add a bit of burnt sienna, for instance. Make as many or as few of these strips as you find useful.

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Not An Exercise

Admittedly, doing color exercises like these is not the most exciting of occupations. They need not be completed all at once, though. Take your time with it, attacking the projects when you have a little free time. The rewards can prove tremendous, increasing your skill, improving your knowledge, and building your confidence as a painter.

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