Colour games

Can you believe these were all painted with the same colours? It's (kinda) true!

Spent a couple of hours this week trying out an exercise in colour mixing from David Hornung's "Colour: A Workshop for Artists and Designers". This is an excellent book, and I have tried a few of the suggested activities, some with my text'art friends.

painted with raw colours from the tube

I began by painting a colour study in flat colours, using gouache paint straight from the tube: deep yellow, light green, sky blue, ultramarine, violet and scarlet. The effect is rather Fauvist. I personally love the Fauves, especially Matisse.

Using the original palette, but adding a bit of burnt sienna

Then I mixed each of these pigments with a small amount of an "admixture", an earth tone of burnt sienna, and reproduced the study using these modified colours. This is called an "altered palette", and it is supposed to produce more unity of colour.

Using the original palette, but adding a bit of yellow ochre 

For my next experiment, I started with the original pigments and added a small amount of another earth tone, yellow ochre. You can see the effect above. Of course, much depends on just how much of the "admixture" is added. Also, although earth tones are the usual choice for the admixture, anything could be used, including black and white. For the exercise, you want to have enough of the original colour that it retains its identity.

Original palette, with neutral grey #4 added

Finally, I added Neutral Grey #4 to each of the original paints, to produce the result above.

For those of us working in cloth, these ideas can be implemented by overdyeing fabric, or simply by choosing colours that are both muted and related. You could even mess around with some paint before choosing your fabrics, matching fabric to the study in paint.