The New Color Mixing Companion

Explore and Create Fresh and Vibrant Color Palettes with Paint, Collage, and Mixed Media--With Templates for Painting Your Own Color Patterns

Josie Lewis

• Publisher: Quarry Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781631595509
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Tecniche artistiche

The New Color Mixing Companion is amodern guide to mixing color and creating exciting palettes, with hands-on projects that incorporate inventive techniques. Uncover new ideas and easy methods of working with color from artist and popular Instagrammer Josie Lewis (@josielewisart), who offers fun lessons that will help you understand color in new ways, opening fresh avenues for your own artwork. This comprehensive guide begins with an introduction to color that includes the color wheel, basic color terminology, and essential supplies. Starter projects help you get comfortable with color while learning how to work with watercolor, acrylic paint, and collage. Next-level projects take your skills even further, with more innovative techniques. The book also includes easy-to-use templates with modern geometric layouts that you can use to create your own stunning color patterns. You'll also discover how to:

• Make gorgeous rainbow effects using a variety of materials and methods.
• Work and play with scraps, shapes and swatches in an array of hues that will help build your color confidence.
• Create beautiful texture in watercolor and acrylic paint using simple supplies and techniques.
• Mix colors to produce shades ranging from calming neutrals to blazing brights.
• Use color effectively to take your imagination to new heights.

Open yourself to incredible creative possibilities with The New Color Mixing Companion!

1

Starter Projects

Glorious Extravagance

First, a brief history lesson. Before the Industrial Revolution, artists had to make their paint by hand, and they stored it in pig bladders. For real. At some point in the mid-1800s, paint tubes with a screw cap were invented and companies began mass-producing paint for artists. Van Gogh (1853–1890) was one of the first painters who squeezed paint directly onto his canvas. The invention of mass-produced paint and aluminum tubes directly led to the expressionist painting movement, which 125 years later led directly to this project.

As we know, art supplies cost money. As a result, it’s easy to get miserly and precious with them and work on tiny little projects with tiny little outcomes. For this project, however, a required mindset will be “I am going to use all the paint.” You may or may not actually use all the paint, but you want to get used to the idea that the paint you just paid hard-earned money for is going to be used, possibly all of it. Even, gasp, wasted. I generally don’t like to waste things I paid cash money for, but you’ve got to take a risk to get a break.

SKILL LEVEL

Beginner and up

SKILLS LEARNED

Basic color mixing, and how to be excessive, abundant, over the top, leading to reckless joy

MATERIALS

15” x 15” (38 x 38 cm) prestretched and primed canvas

3–5 tubes of acrylic paint + large tube of white

Palette knife

MESS LEVEL

Potentially off the charts; take precautions

TIME TO COMPLETE

60 minutes

MORE FOR LESS

The 4 oz. (118 ml) acrylic paint tubes are usually the best value. Student-grade paint is perfect for this because you’re going to use loads of it, so you can at least be thrifty with a lower quality. You’ll want extra white paint. The stiffer the paint, the better—you don’t want paint that’s too liquid.

CHOOSING COLORS

Limit your color range to three to five tube colors plus white or things will get muddy real fast. I used magenta, deep yellow, and turquoise. If you’re interested in the color theory, these tertiary colors are in a triadic combination—not the red, yellow, and blue of your primary colors but one click over on the wheel. This makes the combination feel a little more grown-up and less primary school.

1 Get your canvas ready by laying it flat and squeeze white all over. Add color here and there straight out of the tube. Be bold. You won’t need a brush for this project, but you will need a small, flexible palette knife. There are a lot of different shapes and sizes. I like the diamond-shaped ones, and this project works better with a smaller knife.

2 Using the knife, start smushing the paint around. The first lesson of this project is waste paint and the second lesson is don’t overwork. You’ll be mixing the colors with the white and with one another, but you’ll have a big pile of mud real fast if you overmix. You want to dash in and dash out, and once you’ve piled up some paint in one area, move on!

GO EASY

You are using your palette knife like you’re frosting a cake (yum)—verrrrrry gently. Whatever is on the bottom of the palette knife will end up on the surface of your painting. It’s helpful to wipe the excess paint off the palette knife occasionally to clean things up.

3 Your goals: Completely cover the entire white surface of the canvas, and create interesting textures. There should be some areas where you’ve mixed the paint completely, and other sections where the paint is only barely mixed and showing contr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• An Introduction to Color
• Main Color Techniques
• Studio Supplies
• Why I Paint: My Story
• 1 Starter Projects
• 2 Next Step Projects
• Practical Considerations for Sharing Your Work
• Templates
• Thanks
• Resources
• About the Author
• Index
• Dedication
• Copyright