Blog Archives - Paintings by joe bergholm

My New York Series Number #3 - Empire State Building

5/25/2012

Just so I won't be considered to be sitting idly by, I am introducing my new project, "Empire State Building". This is the third in my New York City Series, following Worth Street NYC and Statue of Liberty which can be seen in the Landscape Gallery on my website.

This view was captured as we sailed down the Hudson River on a Cruise ship bound for Bermuda. It was a magnificently clear evening, and the light was outstanding. I particularly liked this cropping of the New York skyline in that it emphasizes the size of the Empire State Building, while the surrounding buildings look like a fantastically complex toy village.

My initial drawing and block-in is pictured below.

This painting will take a while to complete, for several reasons. First, it is very tedious to pin down the detail and structure, and I can only work on it so long at one time! Second, achieving a harmonious color scheme and sense of light and shadow will take many modifications as the painting evolves.

This illustrates what i am learning, particularly from Scott Nickerson's Master Classes at Colorest. Specifically, to achieve a truly complete painting with fully integrated, color, value, chroma, and structure, takes a lot of time and effort. After recreating a Vermeer, I understand why he only did thirty some paintings in a lifetime. I also think he must of painted with brushes with only one hair!

Fortunately, I truly enjoy the process with all of its turns and surprises as I go along! I am happy painting!

Color, Colour - Real or Imagined

5/25/2012

The role of color in painting has been a point of contention in the history of art. For example, the impressionists shocked the art establishment with their new approach. Actions as simple as the use of black have generated heated discussion, not to mention the fauves!

Well, I am not about to start a new controversy. However, I have had a number of experiences that I feel are thought provoking. Post your thoughts if any of this strikes a cord.

I have been taking Scott Nickerson's Master Class at Colorest for over a year now. In class we have recreated master works by Lefebvre, Cot, Bierstadt, Vermeer, and Bougouereau. We have visited the Met to see the original and have used various printed references. This has been fascinating, or frustrating if you wish, because every source for the same painting has a different color cast and treatment. Further, since the originals are old and subject to aging and discoloration through various varnishing and restorations over the years, who knows what the original may have looked like.

This reminds me of the story about the cleaning of the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel, which revealed Michaelango's paintings in quite a different light. Prior to the cleaning the paintings had assumed quite a muted (aka dirty), dull color pallet. Once they were cleaned of the accumulated candle smoke to reveal painting done with very bright intense colors, many in the art establishment were shocked and dismayed. Whole schools of painting had grown up advocating dull grey painting techniques to mimic the great Michaelangelo!

With each one of our master paintings, we had to contend with similar issues. We could look at all of the reference material, Scott would give suggestions based on his knowledge of the painter and of similar paintings and techniques from the period of the work. However, in the end, each of us had to make up our own mind and develop a consistent color strategy for our self. This was perhaps the most fascinating and valuable part of the whole process.

To illustrate this color dilemma I will give some illustrations from our current class project which is recreating William Bougoereau's work "Harvest". Initially, we had three sources, a large poster, and the images of the painting on two different calendars. I posted a photograph of the poster in my Blog post of 5/2/12, which I have re posted below.

Notice the colors are on the cool side, the skin tones pale, and the pot a dark deep blue alizarin color. The tow calendar photos were different and a bit warmer. However my first cut at the painting tended to mimic the poster.

Scott had another Bougoereau painting that contained the same pot. However in that painting the pot color was much warmer and copper looking. Scott suggested we use that pot. I said we were painting "the best of Bougoereau".

As the painting progressed, Scott suggested that I replace my rosy red complexion with a more yellow green tone. I was having trouble seeing it. But then, my trusty iPad came to the rescue!!!

I discovered an extensive library of Bougoereau painting in the library of the Art Authority App. Below I posted the Art Authority image of harvest.

Note it looks a lot like my poster photo above, cool with reddish skin and dark pot. I then photo processed the image using the Photogene App on my iPad. I increased the saturation, the warmth, and tweaked the shadows, yielding the following image.

WAHA LA! I can now see Scott's yellow green highlights on the skin, and the pot looks a lot more like the copper pot that is was. As you know, with "Photo Shopping" you can change a photo to meet your what ever your taste happens to be. Well, I like this version of the image. It is somewhat similar to some of the calendar images, but of course viewed on an iPad, it is far superior! Further, it has many of the characteristics Scott was recommending, yellow green highlights on the skin, and the warmer copper pot.

So I am tweaking my painting in this direction. It is not complete, but here is the current version.

As you can see mine is even a tad warmer. Upon reflection, and consultation with Scott, I may change it as I work further. However, for now I like my direction best. What is your take?

As you view this, remember that you are looking at photos which change whatever image you are looking in ways you can not entirely guess. So, as I said in my title to this Blog post, "Color, Colour - Real or Imagined", you be the judge!

In future posts, I will be discussing various strategies for planning the color composition of a painting. These will be based on the color gamut definition of color space that I introduced in my Blog post of 5/2/12, along with the color pool approach to painting I introduced in my post on 3/25/12. I will also post a wrap up when I finally finish "Harvest" which is my project to recreate an old master painting using my thoroughly modern paint pallet based on the Golden OPEN Modern Color Paint Set. Keep on painting!

Update Classic Colors with my Golden OPEN Modern Paints

5/21/2012

The following is the current status of my recreation of William Bouguereau's "Harvest" updating my Blog post of 5/8/12. This is a project from Scott Nickerson's Master Class at Colorest in Red Bank, New Jersey. This is my test of using my new Golden OPEN modern color set to recreate an old master painting. I have described this pallet in detail in previous Blog posts from 5/2/12.

So far, I am happy with the capability of this pallet to match the classic use of color. Particularly useful is the ability of Golden OPEN acrylics to remain workable on the pallet over the month or so that I have been working on this painting, using the procedures that I have described in my Blog post of 5/18/12. This capability enables me to reuse and modify the same color pools on the pallet and maintain color consistency as the painting evolves.

So far, I am about done with the sky, background, pot, and skin tones. Now I need to finish off the wheat field and give this young lady a new blouse! More Fun!!!

Statue of Liberty Painting Update Number 2

5/20/2012

Here is an update on my progress on the Statue of Liberty painting, last reported on in the post of 5/17/12.

Additional work has been done on the sky to achieve aerial perspective and form in the clouds. A lot of wrk was done one the sailboat, particularly the translucency of the sails, the mast extensions, rigging, and the addition of all of the tourists on board to sail by the Statue of Liberty. Refinements and highlights were added to the statue, base structures, and the rest of the ground objects in order to bring them into the appropriate harmony.

Note particularly the brightest highlights on the base of the statue and the mainsail of the sailboat. They share the same warm glow of the evening sunlight. I am always amazed that when I get a relationship like this right, it causes a physical reaction when I look at the painting! If you compare this with the version I posted on 5/18/12, I think you can sense the difference these small changes make in the harmony of the painting.

This tuning and evolution of a painting over time is the reason that I like and depend on the Golden OPEN paints staying workable and reusable on my pallet for the life of the painting process, as I described in detail in my post of 5/17/12.

Prints of this painting are available on my Fine Art America (FAA) website, http://www.joebergholm.artistwebstes.com, and in the following FAA Galleries:

statue of liberty art

statue of liberty paintings

How I Use My Golden OPEN Acrylic Modern Paint Set

5/17/2012

As I covered in my previous post on 5/17/12, It is important to me to have the same pools of color workable on my pallet so that I can reuse and modify the colors as I progress with the painting process. The Golden OPEN Acrylics are wonderful for this. I have used the same paint on my pallet for weeks and in some cases months, and the color pools are still workable! My oil painting friends are amazed at this when they see it!

However, to achieve this important capability requires some very specific working procedures. I will illustrate this process through photos of my pallets for the Statue of Liberty painting covered in my recent posts.

The following photo depicts the pallet that I have been using for the statue land and water objects.

Note the first important aspect, the pallet is a sheet of plexiglass, with a neutral backing. To keep the paints workable it is important to use a nonporous surface!!! The reason for this is that we do not want the surface to absorb ANY moisture from the paint.

The second important point is that I use NO water at any time in the painting process, except to clean the brushes. If I use water to clean a brush during the painting process, I make sure to wipe it in a paper towel before using it again with paint. During the painting process, if I want to dilute or thicken the paint, I use the various mediums that are part of the OPEN line. Or. mixtures of OPEN and regular mediums for pallet knife painting, as I have described in posts on 4/1/12 and 4/2/12. Note all of the containers of medium on my painting table in the above photo.

The final cleaning of the brushes at the end of the painting session is a special process which I will describe later in this post.

The third point I want to make is that I may use multiple pallets for a single painting. In the case of the Statue of Liberty painting, I have a second pallet for the sky and water portions of the picture, which is depicted in the examples below. The reason for this is that the sky and sea are large areas with many shades and tints of color that I want to preserve and modify as I develop this part of the painting.

The forth important point is that between painting sessions the pallets must be stored in airtight containers. The following photo depicts my plexiglass pallet in my air tight container.

Note a very important point! Before sealing the container, I always spray the pallet with OPEN Thinner. I fill the spray bottle shown at the right hand side of the photo with OPEN thinner, and use it to spray the pallet before sealing the lid. I may very occasionally spray the pallet during a long painting session to control the consistency of the paint on the pallet.

Again it is important not to use water for this purpose. Water breaks down the binder in the paint and exacerbates color shift as colors dry.

The final topic I want to discuss is the process for cleaning the brushes as depicted in the following photo.

Once the pallet is carefully sealed away, I can use the lid to clean my brushes. Note, I number my pallet cases to keep things strait, as I work on numerous painting at once. The first step in brush cleaning is to dip the brush into a cup of water and then paint on a paper towel as depicted above. I will do this several times until it seems that most of the paint has been removed. I may also swish the brush around in the water before painting on the paper towel to hasten the process. Once the brush seems pretty clean, I will squeeze a puddle of the OPEN Thinner on the top of the pallet box, as depicted above. I then press the paint brush into the thinner puddle. As I do this, no matter how clean the brush seems after the water cleaning, you will see pigment streaming out from the brush from around the base of the brush hairs. I always find this amazing. I then will swish the brush in the water, dry in on the towel, and then brush it into the thinner puddle again. This process may be repeated several times until no pigment is visible when the brush is squeezed in the thinner puddle. At which point, I rinse the brush in a clean cup of water, form the brush hairs by stroking the brush on a clean portion of the paper towel, and then hang the brush with the hairs pointing down to dry.

This process seems to be extremely effective and prolongs the life of my brushes. This is important to me in that I use very high quality brushes, including sable, mongoose, and bristle.

Previously, I have also covered my approach to pallet knife painting with Golden OPEN acrylics in posts on 4/1/12 and 4/2/12, and my approach to my augmented pallet of the Golden OPEN Modern Set of Colors in a post on 5/1/12. These processes have taken me quite a while to develop, and I hope that they can be useful to others. Happy painting!

Update on My Statue of Liberty Painting

5/17/2012

The following photo depicts the current state of my progress on the Statue of Liberty painting that I introduced in a recent post on 5/12/12.

There have been refinements in almost all areas of the painting. These include correcting perspective issues with the statue; bringing the light into balance for the statue, base, grass, trees, and buildings; extensive work on the sky to introduce the clouds and heighten aerial perspective; and major work on the boat and sails. Note the highlights added to the green statue are in red! Also notice how the shading on the hull of the boat establishes its angle of motion, and reflects the color of the water.

Much more needs to be done, but I must sit the painting aside and look at it for a while to detect what needs to be done next.

As you can see from my posts which track the development of my paintings, my painting process is a long series of steps where I develop and modify the drawing and the color scheme. In order to effectively modify and develop my color scheme over a considerable period of time, it is important to have my current colors available in workable pools of paint on my pallet. This why I love my Golden OPEN acrylic paints. They can stay workable on my pallet for weeks and months as I develop a painting. I will discuss how I do this in the next post "How I Use by Golden OPEN Modern Color Set".

My Statue of Liberty Work In Progress

5/12/2012

This scene depicts the Statue of Liberty bathed in the evening light as we passed her cursing on our way to Bermuda. It was such a beautiful evening, working on this painting brings back such pleasant memories. It is the second painting of my New York Series. The first is Worth Street NYC with you can see on my website. There will be more New York paintings based on the magnificent light as we sailed down the Hudson River that pleasant afternoon.

This painting is 24 by 18 inches on a 1.5 deep panel. I am continuing the painting around the edges. The painting will not need a frame. I will carefully varnish it so that the painting will look like a 1.5 inch deep block of marble!

I started the painting with a detailed pencil drawing. I started the painting prices by blocking in the Statue of liberty and the island, followed by the buildings on the horizon. The next block in was the sky, followed by the water.

I found that in painting the sky that mixing titanium white and zinc white to tint my blues gave the sky a rich translucent quality. I will be using this approach more in the future. The sky will actually have a fascinating cloud structure that will also serve to sett off the silhouette of the Statue. This will be the next step!

I will now be going back into each area of the painting to add detail and to bring the light and color into harmony. Just a few examples that I am currently thinking of is to reduce the chroma of the grass on the island, deepen the shadow side of the statue base, add texture to the sunny walls of the base of the statue, and add some detail and increase the aerial perspective to the buildings.

This one is really fun to work on, building my own little world!

Update Classic Colors with Modern Paints

5/7/2012

Here is an update to my 5/1/12 post of my attempt to recreate William Bouguereau's Harvest with my new pallet of thoroughly modern colors! Below is a photo of my painting along with a photo of the current state of my color pool pallet.

I have been concentrating on the skin tones on the arms, hands and face. I am not near finished with this work, but it has been a fascinating process from two points of view, drawing and painting!

First the drawing. I am always amazed that no matter how careful I think that I am being with the initial graphite drawing, I always find significant changes that are needed when I come to painting the details. This is particularly true with complex structures such as hands and the face. As far a s the face is concerned, i am always amazed when painting, the smallest touch of color shape is needed to actually capture the likeness!!

My first attempt at skin tones with my new pallet of colors has been fun. The photo of the pallet shows the luscious pools of color that have been created so far. Again more needs to be done, but I am very pleased with the pallet colors and the color pool methodology to enable an unlimited color gradation, while maintaining color harmony.

Well that's it for now. I will keep you posted on future progress.

Classic Colors with Modern Paints

5/1/2012

I will be reporting on my progress recreating a old masterpiece with thoroughly modern paints! I am fortunate to be studying with an excellent portrait/realist oil painter and teacher, Scott Nickerson, at Colorest in Red Bank New Jersey (the third best small town in the USA, based on a recent article in Smithsonian magazine). One of the classes Scott offers is a master class where we recreate a painting of one of the old masters such as Vermeer, Bierstadt, Lefebvre, and Cot. My renditions of works from past classes can be seen in my Landscape and Figure Galleries on this website.

All of these paintings were done using my Golden OPEN acrylic paints. In doing them, I used a wide variety of paint colors, many of which where the classic colors, such as the earth tones, that would have been available in the time period that the artists created these works.

The current Master Class at Colorest is recreating a painting by William Bouguereau, pictured below.

As reported in recent blogs, I am adopting new processes for painting based on a standard pallet organization, use of mediums, and a standard set of colors on the pallet. The colors I use are the new Golden OPEN pallet of modern colors, augmented by zinc white, bone black and my mixture of Golden heavy body and OPEN gel mediums to support knife painting.

I like these paints in that they are all inorganic and carry no health warnings. They are also quite pure and mix well without muddying one another. My pallet consists of a warm and cool version of a blue, red and yellow, as well as titanium white, zinc white, and green. This pallet contains none of the old earth tons, cadmiums, etc. Therefore, to put this modern color pallet to the test, I decided to see if I could successfully recreate the Bouguereau painting using only my modern color pallet. If I can do this, I will feel comfortable simplifying my painting life with only eight tubes of paint! I will also feel comfortable that I have learned a lot about using and mixing colors.

The following photos depict my painting and my pallet in an early stage in the process.

As you can see my pallet consists of four color pools; a light and dark orate pools and light and dark plus pools. The dark blue pool is based on neutralizing the the warm blue with the dark orange pool color. These color pools provided the initial color notes for the sky, head cloth, vest, skirt and vase, as well as the distant hills and water.

The following photos depict the state of the painting and the pallet after the next stage of the painting process. Note the evolution and expansion of the color pools as I matched the colors of the various objects in the motif, such as the warm neutral head scarf, and the copper vase. It was very interesting to note as I was working with the color pools I would suddenly notice that a slight modification of the copper vase color was great for the wall and a slightly warmer version of the wall was good for the ground in the lower left hand corner, I got the feeling that color was leading me around the painting, as opposed to me deciding what to do next! This was an exciting feeling.

I also like this direction that my work is taking me, in that I am not looking at the painting and saying which tube of paint should I use, or do I need to purchase a new color. Rather, I am starting with a generic pool of color and visually comparing it to my painting and saying does it need to be lighter, darker, warmer, cooler, etc., and I know how to manipulate the paints on the pallet to get whatever result that I want. This really getting to be fun.

Included below are several snapshots of progress to date. I will be updating this post with additional views of the pallet and other observations. For now let me just say that I think that the new pallet is meeting the test and is actually simpler to use. Today was a big challenge in that we started to add the skin tones. I was apprehensive. However, the color pools actually seem to make it easier to meet the various skin color variations while maintaining color harmony.

More to come!

My Augmented Golden OPEN Modern Pallet

5/1/2012

In Recent posts, I have been covering my activities using my new pallet, for both regular and heavy impasto painting. However I have not specifically identified the colors that I am using.

My pallet is an expansion of the Golden OPEN Modern Paint Set. The basic Golden OPEN Modern Paint Set consists of seven relatively high chroma, transparent, organic pigments (which produce very clean mixtures), plus titanium white. For my new pallet I have also added zinc white which is transparent and can lighten the value of colors without changing the hue, and bone black which has a moderately low chroma and can be used to lower the value of paint mixtures with a minimum impact on the hue of the mixture. I have also added my mixture of Golden regular and OPEN gel mediums to enable me to do impasto knife painting with a drying time similar to my normal thinner applications of OPEN paints (which I have discussed in a previous Blog post).

Therefore, my augmented modern pallet consists of seven mixing colors, and three tinting and shading colors, along with the mediums.

The Golden modern pallet paint set includes a warm and a cool versions of each of, the blue, red and yellow hues, as well as a green hue. Another useful way of looking at the Modern Color Set is in the framework of Michael Wilcox's book, "Blue and Yellow don't make Green." This is a great book which explains what actually makes color mixing work.

Basically, white light has a spectrum of all colors. Blue pigments look blue because they absorb all of the colors in the light except blue, which it reflects back to the viewer. Similarly, yellow pigments absorb all of the colors of the light except the yellow, which it reflect back to the viewer. Therefore, if you mixed pure blue and pure yellow pigments, the blue would absorb the yellow and the yellow would absorb the blue and the mixture would look black!!!

The reason that blue paint and yellow paint can mix a green is that, in reality, the blue pigment contains some green and the yellow pigment contains some green. When the two are mixed together all the colors are absorbed, except the greens that they have in common. Therefore, if you want to mix a strong green, you must pick a yellow that has a large green content and a blue that contains a large green content. In the case of our modern pallet, to get a strong green we would mix our blue with a lot of green, Phthalo Blue (Green Shade), and our yellow that has a large green content, Hansa Yellow Light.

On the other hand, the Anthraquinone Blue and Hansa Yellow Medium paint pigments each have less green content. Therefore, when these colors are mixed a weaker green will result. We will demonstrate this in the context of the color wheel later in this post.

Therefore, it its useful to consider two properties for each of our seven basic modern colors; the relative warm or cool properties of the paint, and the primary pigment content that will drive the mixing properties. Therefore, for our pallet we have the following:

Hansa Yellow Light: cool yellow, yellow and green (Y/G) pigments
Hansa Yellow Medium: warm yellow, yellow and orange (Y/O) pigments

Quinacridone Magenta: cool red, red and violet (R/V) pigments
Naphthol Red Light: warm red, red and orange (R/O) pigments

Phthalo Blue Green Shade: cool blue, blue and green (B/G) pigments
Anthraquinone Blue: warm blue, blue and violet (B/V) pigments

Phthalo Green Blue Shade: cool green, green and
blue (G/B) pigments

This explains how to mix the strongest, highest chroma, secondary colors of green, orange, and violet. We get the strongest green by mixing the yellow/green color with the blue/green color We get the strongest orange by mixing or yellow/orange color with the red/orange color. We get the strongest violet by mixing the blue/violet color with the red/violet color.

The other mixtures will lead to duller, lower chroma, colors. For example, mixing our blue/green color (Phthalo) with our red orange color (Naphthol Red Light) with give a very dull low chroma violet. because each color contains only a small amount of violet pigment!

As depicted in the following photo, my pallet is laid out with the warm blue, yellow and red along the left hand side. The advantage of separating the warm and colors is that it reinforces the process of migrating a color pool while painting. As I paint, I modify the color pools on my pallet to match the colors I need in my painting by asking my self questions such as should the color on my pallet be warmer, cooler, more red, lighter, darker, etc.. This organization of the pallet makes it easier to immediately pick the appropriate warm or cool color, or the approach for tinting or shading.

The specific warm colors placed on the left hand side of the pallet include Golden OPEN Anthraquinone Blue, Naphthol Red Light, and Hansa Yellow Medium. The cool colors are placed along the top edge of the pallet. The specific cool colors are Hansa Yellow Light, Quinacridone Magenta, Phthalo Blue (Green Shade), and Phthalo Green (Blue Shade). I call these seven colors the mixing colors, since these are the paint colors used to mix all of the hues that we will be using to paint.

In addition to the mixing colors, there are three other colors on the pallet. These are the tint and shade colors used to adjust the value and the opacity of the various mixtures of the mixing colors.

Tinting is the addition of white to a mixture to make the color lighter, or raising the value of the mixture. The tinting colors on the pallet are Titanium White and Zinc White. Titanium white is opaque and has a tendency to give certain mixtures a pastel or chalky characteristic. On the other hand, zinc white is very transparent and does not significantly impact the hue of the color to which it is added. Properly applied, these colors can help control both the value and opacity of the mixtures to meet the needs of the particular application. The two whites are placed in the upper left hand corner of the pallet, as seen above.

Shading is adding a paint to a mixture to lower the value or make the mixture darker. Bone black is my shading color, since it has a moderate opacity and has a minimum impact of the hue of the mixtures to which it is added. It is placed in the upper right hand corner of my pallet as seen above.

My pile of mixed Golden regular and OPEN gel acrylic mediums, for use with heavy impasto pallet knife painting as described in a previous Blog post, is also placed in the upper right corner.

This pallet of colors has an amazing ability to mix a wide range of colors. In oder to understand the range of colors that can be mixed, we will view the colors on the standard color wheel. The classic color wheel defines a color space with intense, high chroma, colors at the outer edge and dull, low chroma, colors toward the center. The various hues, or colors, spread around as spokes of the wheel. When placed on the classic color wheel, our high chroma modern colors are near the outer edge of the wheel, as depicted in the following photo. You can click on the image to see a larger version that is easier to read.

Note that the darker blues and green are naturally of lower chroma and are nearer the center of the chart. As discussed later, these colors are generally tinted our mixed with higher value colors in oder to appreciate their distinct hues.

Note that each color has been plotted based on its hue (color) and chroma. Each of the color points corresponding to the paints on our pallet are indicated on the chart above and the outer points are connected by straight lines. This defines a five sided polygon in color space, as depicted in the photo above (you can click on the photo to see a larger version to see the details).

When two colors are mixed together the resulting mixture will fall somewhere on the straight line connecting the two original colors in color space. Therefore, the area within the five sided polygon defines all of the colors (defined by their hue and chroma) that can be mixed by combining combinations of our seven mixing colors. At this point I am not including use of the titanium white, zinc white, and bone black pints, since they are used to impact the value and opacity of the various hue mixtures and will be discussed later.

The area within the five sided polygon is called the "Color Gamut" of this pallet of colors, as shown in the following image. The color Gamut defines the pool of all possible hue mixtures that can be mixed from the seven colors that define the color space. The use of Color Gamuts is discussed in detail in a great book on color in painting, "Color and Light" by James Gurney. I highly recommend this book for insight into how to mix, use, understand, and see color in painting.

The following picture depicts each of the seven mixing colors at their respective positions on the color wheel. Again you can double click the image to see the details on a larger version of the image.

The highest intensity or chroma secondary colors (orange, violet and green) are mixed by combining the adjacent primary yellow red and blue paints. For example, the most brilliant orange is obtained by mixing the yellow/orange (Y/O) with the red/orange (R/O) color, since these two colors have the largest orange pigment content of any of the pallet colors. Similarly, the most brilliant violet is obtained mixing the blue/violet (B/V) with the red/violet (R/V) color; and the most brilliant green is obtained mixing the yellow/green (Y/G) with the blue/green (B/G) color. These colors will fall along the outer edge of our five sided color space, as depicted in the following image.

When we mix non adjacent colors that are connected by lines that run across the color space, lower chroma or darker colors result, as depicted in the following image.

The above image depicts three color strings that cross the color space. The red/orange and green/blue pallet paints are directly across from one another on the wheel and are hence perfect compliments. Notice that as they are mixed, they grey each other down and create a near perfect black at the center of the wheel. Note there are two green strings depicted; the blue/green to yellow/orange and the lower chroma (nearer the center) blue/violet to yellow/orange. Note that both of these strings are less intense (lower chroma) than the outer edge green string depicted in the previous chart above.

The following image depicts three more color strings that cross the wheel and connect to mixed colors on the edge of the wheel.

The lower string connects a mixed red color to the blue/green on the other side of the wheel. Note that the red is progressively deepened as it heads to the center of the wheel and more of the blue/green color is mixed with it. One of the values along the way matches the standard tube color of alizarin crimson.

The next higher string connects a mixed orange to green/blue paint on the other side of the wheel. Note that as the orange is mixed it becomes darker and browner as it approaches the center of the wheel. The colors that it matches as it does this are the standard burnt sienna and burnt umber.

The top string connects a more yellow orange mixture with the green/blue on the other side of the wheel. Note that as more of the green/blue is mixed with this orange, it becomes darker and browner as it heads to the center of the wheel. However, since this string is further from the low chroma center of the wheel than the previous string, it is less dark and contains lighter browns. Colors such as yellow ochre, raw sienna, and naples yellow can be derived from strings of this type.

Note that the paint spots near the center of the color wheel are of such a low chroma, it is hard to detect their actual hue. This is not a problem in that we often want to use a deep color that that is related to the lighter colors around it. However, these colors are often tinted with white to use in lighter applications, such as a blue for a sky. To illustrate this I have included a few tints of the low chroma center colors in the lower left hand side of the chart.

This emphasizes another important aspect of color that the color wheel does not address, particularly the value, or the lightness or darkness, of the colors. Each of the mixing, tinting, and shading colors in our pallet has a different value, as depicted in the following photo. The values range from 1 (dark) to 10 (light).

There are three primary ways of changing the value of a color. One is to mix it with another color, such as neutralizing it with its compliment, or any other lighter or darker color. Any of these techinques will also change the hue to a small or large extent. A second way is to tint the color with white, either the opaque titanium or the transparent zinc depending on the application, such as to cover or to glaze. The third way is to shade by adding the bone black which will lower the chroma and make the color darker with minimum impact on the hue. Any of these techniques can be used, depending on the effect that is desired for each particular instance.

Summary

In summary, my augmented modern color pallet defines a very broad color space, or Gamut, as depicted by the five sided polygon in the following image. We can view this five sided Color Gamut as our color pool, where we are free splash around and to mix any of the seven mixing colors to achieve the results we desire.

This Color Gamut contains color mixtures of an infinite variety of hues, ranging from high chroma to low chroma colors. The reason for this is that the mixed colors will fall on the line connecting the positions of the two original colors. For example, if you start mixing low chroma colors, there is no way that you can achieve a high chroma color, since the line connecting the two colors will be near the center of the color space. However, since we are often starting our mixtures with high chroma colors we can achieve both high and low chroma colors, depending on the colors that we mix. The classic example of this is mixing two colors compliments, directly across from one another on the color wheel, such as the red/orange to green/blue example we viewed above. The line between the two complimentary colors will go straight across the color wheel and cross the center of the wheel, where the mixture will be of the lowest gray chroma and near black.

So you see the results of the various mixtures depends on the nature of the pigments involved. As pointed out by James Gurney in his book "Color and Light", a very interesting case is to mix our Phthalo Green Blue Shade (G/B) (which has green/blue pigments) with Quinacridone Magenta (R/V) (red/violet pigments). As depicted in the following image, the resulting string of mixtures will include a dull BLUE!!! Notice that I had to tint all of the colors in the string so that we can easily see the color of the mixture.

How is that for a surprise, "red and green can make blue", depending on the red and the blue pigments you mix!!! Gurney points out that the old statement that the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow are the only colors that can not be created by mixing other colors is just plain wrong. The colors that a paint can mix is just dependent of the mixtures of pigments that it contains! So happy mixing and experimenting!

As an example of "happy mixing" I have included the following image of one of my pallets for one of my paintings. I use the same pallet for the life of a single painting. Since Golden OPEN paints stay workable for weeks or months if kept in an airtight container and occasionally sprayed with OPEN thinner. Therefore, I can have the same color pools available to be to used or modified for the whole period of time that I work on a painting. And, of course, I use a different pallet for each painting that I am working on, since each painting will use different color pools, depending on the color scheme of the motif being painted.

Note that for this painting I had color pools of brown, red green and blue. Each pool I have pushed segments in different directions, such as adding a warmer or cooler color to the mix. Notice also, that tints have bee developed for each of the color pools.

I am finding that using this approach to be very freeing. I no longer have to carry around a large number of tubes of paint. I no longer have to think in terms of matching my color needs to any particular named tube of paint. I no longer have to think which tube of paint do I need now, "is it yellow ochre or raw sienna that I want now?". Rather, the color pools enable me to become more attuned to color itself. Now I can think that that color I need is a brown with a cool red tendency. It is then easy to move my color pool in the brown cool red direction until it has the hue that I want. I can just concentrate on the properties of the hue desired and not the paint names!

As I do this I find that I will suddenly notice another place in the painting where the same hue, or a slightly modified version of the hue, is needed. I am finding that color is now directing me to how paint the picture. Very exciting.

It is interesting that years ago my son-in-law, a trained talented painter, suggested a color pool technique to me. However, I did not have the experience to understand how to do it. However, with experience painting, experience studying color theory, the recent availability of the slow drying Golden OPEN acrylics, and now this wonderful set of modern colors, it has suddenly come together for me. I am now enjoying the freedom of color pool painting. I hope my Blog can help others shorten their learning curve and enjoy this fascinating experience.

In future posts, I will discuss strategies for defining and using color pools within the Color Gamut of this pallet, and provide additional practical suggestions for managing and understanding the mixing process.

For now let me direct you to the extensive color mixing tables that the Golden paint Company has made available to describe this modern set of colors on the following links:
http://www.goldenpaints.com/images/ColorMixingGuide.pdf
and
http://www.goldenpaints.com/images/colorMixngModernTheory.pdf
Golen also has other references in their product announcement for the new modern set of colors at the following site:
http://www.goldenpaints.com/company/news/2012/colormixing_moderntheory/

Copyright @ 2011, Joe Bergholm, All rights reserved.