Tippette #26 - Switching Color

Tippette = Snippet of a Tip (in watercolor).  One per day...during April...right here!  Tell a friend!

Don't go long without switching colors

When people tell me that they like my art, it makes me analyze what aspects of my art really draw people in.  I'm convinced that part of it is due to the fact that I don't go very far with one color without introducing another color into it.  That doesn't mean that I don't have quiet, safer passages.  I do.  But I do find myself introducing another color about every inch or so...can't help myself.  Remember that, if we paint long & often enough, your painting style emerges...this happens to be my style.  I'm not saying everyone needs to do this.

With the use of close up examples, I hope you can see what I'm talking about.  Each of these squares below is a 1" x 1" section of different paintings.  They look a bit pixelated because I've enlarged them a lot for this post, but hopefully it lets you look into my process a bit.

All are 1" x 1" sections of my actual paintings.

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Tippette #21 - Mixing Rich Blacks and Pretty Grays

Tippette = Snippet of a Tip (in watercolor).  One per day...during April...right here!  Tell a friend!

Mixing Rich Blacks and Pretty Grays

Although I do have more than one black that I keep in my arsenal (ivory black and lamp black), rare is the time that I use them "straight". If I want a section of my painting to look dark, I mix other colors to create the look of black.  This certainly creates more interesting patterns in my dark areas.

"At the End of the Day II" (watercolor with pen and ink) by Helen K Beacham - Sold.
No black used in this painting, other than the drawing lines.

Experiment with some of these mixtures below.  Depending on the ratio of your pigments, you can come up with "warmer" blacks or "cooler" blacks, both of which are useful for their individual purposes.  

Burnt Sienna + French Ultramarine Blue
Cadmium Red Light + French Ultramarine Blue
Cadmium Red Light + French Ultramarine Blue + Aureolin Yellow
Alizarin Crimson + Thalo Green
Alizarin Crimson + Hooker's Green
Alizarin Crimson + Hooker's Green + French Ultramarine Blue
There are infinitely more mixtures available to you...this is just a start.  

If you add more water to the mixes shown above, you transform the blacks into beautiful, soft grays.  Extra tip: Really, any mixture of 3 primaries will result in pretty grays.  Even in the 2-color mixtures above, if you think about it, it's 3 primaries that you're using.  For instance, in the Alizarin Crimson/Hookers Green combo, the green is made up of yellow and blue.  Added to the red (Alizarin Crimson), you get a gray.  There are an infinite number of combinations you can make as a result of whatever colors you already have on your palette.

"Cypress Knees" by Helen K Beacham - Available.
The water in the foreground comes off looking gray (*), but it's made up of blue, green and alizarin.
(*) Watercolor artists are all about the "illusions" we can provide our viewers.

As for my ivory black and lamp black, I'll sometimes add just a Touch to a mixture when I want it to bleed more or cause some granulation in my wash.  It's not even usually to make something darker.  Try it yourself and see!

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Tippette #15 - Mixing the Right Values

Tippette = Snippet of a Tip (in watercolor).  One per day...during April...right here!  Tell a friend!

In my April 13 POST, I touched on the subject of Value and promised I'd spend more time on the concept in a future post, so here we are.

Mixing the Right Values

Value refers to how dark or light a pigment is.  You use value to accomplish contrast.

High key:  When a painting is mostly done with pastel colors like this one.

Low key:  When mostly dark colors are used.

Some artists rely on as many as 10 values in their paintings.  I suggest you not worry too much about keeping up with that.  I do, however, think that you need at least 3 values.  You need lights, mediums and darks.  So let me show you how to quickly create each.

I like to tell my students that a "dark value" has the consistency of cream when you create your puddle.  The "middle value" has the consistency of 1% milk and the "light value" has the consistency of tea (very see-through).  Easy, right?  If I know I need all 3 values, I mix my dark first.  Then I pull part of it over to the right and I add a touch of water (with my brush) to slightly thin it out. Then I pull some of that second mixture on over to the right again, and add more water.  That's it!

Creating 3 values of French Ultramarine Blue

Below, I'm showing you how my 3 French Ultramarine Blue values look when painted first into clear water (wet into wet) in the top row, and painted on to dry paper (wet into dry) in the bottom row.  

Dark, Medium & Light Values
Row 1:  I wet the paper first.  Allows softer edges but the paint is also lighter than when painted on dry paper.
Row 2:  Painted onto dry paper.  Ends up with harder edges and resulting color is darker (or at least more solid) than in Row 1.

If you want things to look closer to you, paint them darker.  Conversely, things that are further away should be rendered with paler values.  All this supports the concept of aerial perspective (a future topic?).

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Tippette #13 - Think VALUE...not COLOR.

Tippette = Snippet of a Tip (in watercolor).  One per day...during April...right here!

We're almost halfway through our month of daily watercolor tippettes.  Do any of you have one that you'd like to share with my readers?  If so, write me and I'll give you credit!  Give me your tip, along with at least one image and I'll be extremely happy to share it with everyone here!  Now on to today's tippette:

Think VALUE...not COLOR.

When I demonstrate for my students, I often get asked what color I'm using to paint this or that.  It inevitably catches me off guard, because I don't think about the color as much as about what value I'm going to use. (Value refers to how dark or light the color is.)  You use value to accomplish contrast.  To make things look like they're receding into the background, use a lighter value for those things that are progressively further away.

Now, let's look at this black-and-white version of one of my paintings.  Without peeking at the image below it, try to envision which colors I've used to create this painting.  (For those of you that already "know" this painting, humor me!).  

Black-and-white of "Walk with Me" by Helen K Beacham

Could you tell that this is a sun-dappled path that leads from a somewhat shadowy, cool foreground to a sunny background?  Of course you can. Yet you have no idea what colors I've used.   So...what colors did I use? Green?  Yellow?  Brown?  Where did I place them? What other colors do you envision?  

Now let's scroll down and see the finished piece.  Are you surprised?  Why or why not?

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"Walk with Me" by Helen K Beacham

My painting holds together, not because of the colors I chose, but because the correct values were used in the right spots.  If you're concerned about whether your paintings have the right values, either use a photo-editing software to convert a photo of your painting to black-and-white (or grayscale), or you can take a black-and-white Xerox of it.  Then really study it to determine whether your painting holds together based on your values.

In a future tippette, I'll discuss how I mix my paint to accomplish values - See you right back here tomorrow!  And thanks for sharing my tippettes with your friends!  I've enjoyed meeting many of them!

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Tippette #3: Mixing your colors

Tippette = Snippet of a Tip (in watercolor).

Note: On Day 2 (yesterday) of posting my tippettes, I realized that you, my readers, are not able to post comments if you're receiving my posts via email...it's a "no-reply" situation that you get.  As such, if you wish to send me a comment, please either visit my blog directly to post the comment, or email me at helenKbeacham@gmail.com (and remember to use the K in the middle of my name or it won't come to me).  Thanks, and my apologies.  Now let's keep talking about Art!

What is the best way to mix your colors?

Off the top of my head, I'd say there are 3 basic ways that I mix and apply my paints.  Do you use other methods?  If so, I'll be glad to use them in future posts and give you credit!

1.  Painting one layer at a time (often called a "glaze", which you must allow to get totally dry before adding another layer or glaze), and letting the colors mix optically when you look at your painting.  I often paint several glazes over particular areas, either using the same colors if the first layer needs to be darker, or using a totally different color to achieve an optical effect (think blue over yellow = some shade of green depending on which shades of blue & yellow are used).

2.  Pre-mixing 2 or more pigments on your palette.  This, to me, creates a duller color, but sometimes it's just the RIGHT color that you were looking for.

3.  Putting down one color, and then dropping a 2nd (or 3rd) color into it while still wet (while allowing it to flow at will, or tilting the board to help it out).

In 1, I put down burnt sienna first and let it dry before painting Indigo over it as a second glaze (or wash).
In 2, I pre-mixed together burnt sienna and Indigo on my palette, resulting in this homogeneous green color!
In 3, I put down burnt sienna and while it was still very wet, I lightly brushed in (and tapped in with my brush) my Indigo.
In all 3 cases, I used equal amounts of both colors, although the burnt sienna predominates visually in the first and last. 

NOTE:  In case you're wondering, if I'm painting into a larger area (bigger than 1" maybe), I wet my paper first with clean water and allow it to soak in just a little bit.  Then I paint into it.

Which of these 3 methods is best?  The answer is: the one that you feel will do the job that you're about to tackle.  I use all three methods at some point, in almost every painting.  Today's exercise is to show you that you can get different effects from the same two colors, depending on how you tackle the application of the paint.  You should periodically practice these types of exercises in order to understand the phenomenon firsthand.

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