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Mixing Color Directly On The Painting Surface |
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| I love color wheels. I think of them as rainbows, full of hope, no two exactly alike, representing an infinite number of possibilities. I must function within the wheel of color if I am to work with color at all. | ||
| During the course of my struggle with watercolor, I became aware of a simple but startling fact: I often found more "color excitement" in my large plastic palette surface than I found in my painting. For example: I would mix yellow and red together on the palette to get a secondary orange. Then I would tone down the orange's brashness with a touch of blue and carry the mixture on my brush, to the surface of my painting. But in the process I left behind the excitement of the remnants of the primary colors that were hinted at in the secondary and tertiary colors. The hints of those primary colors were found on my palette, not in the painting. Occasionally I might add a bit of orange to a blue shadow by mixing the pigments on the painting surface, but that was a small exception to my rule of procedure. At that Point I found my color statements rather dull and lifeless, and I'm sure the public viewed my work the same way. | ||
| Out of a gradual self assessment and critiquing grew an attitude about color "mixing" that I now hold to with a fair amount of regularity. I like to mix my colors directly on a wet or damp surface. I keep my reds, yellows, and blues segregated on the plastic palette, and I'm careful not to let them blend on the palette. With this technique, you can see the presence of some of the primary colors showing through in the dominant secondary or tertiary colors within my painting. The color excitement that was once found only on my palette can now be found, to a degree, in my finished painting. | ||
| I produce greens by mixing and blending yellows and blues right on the wet surface of my painting. For sunny green, I add a bit of red and sometimes a fresh yellow, which I can cool with a bit more blue to produce a shadowy effect. When the painting dries, I will find hints of some of the primary colors in the secondary color. | ||
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Regulating Paint Flow |
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| Watercolor painting demands that you work rapidly so that you can take advantage of the variety of effects obtainable while the paper is wet. It's easy to suffer an anxiety attack when you have to adjust values in different areas, control color dominance, and try to produce a pleasing variety of edges between shapes all at the same time. | ||
| Painting with watercolors for many years has taught me to look for ways to "bite off" only what I can chew. For instance, lets say I want to paint an entire page with some abstract design elements and textures as an underpinning. In such a case I would paint in a light value for the under painting. By leaving some light areas, even some white of the paper exposed, I will produce a transparency and luminosity as the rest of the painting progresses. As I continue to layer images and shapes on the ground surface, I can select and concentrate on smaller areas to develop. I love to paint on wet surfaces; it's a wonderful control device. When I charge pigments onto a wet area, the pigments will not go beyond the wet boundary. I can actually regulate my paint flow by simply controlling the wetness of the paper. | ||
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These paintings illustrate the regulation of paint flow by controlling the wetness of a given area. The live foliage was preserved as white paper during the painting of background because these special shapes, be they a flower bud or a leaf are kept dry as the primary pigments are "charged" into the wet surfaces that surround them. |
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Adjusting Color: Glazing |
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| In order to adjust the value or temperature of a watercolor painting, you need to know about glazing. Solutions used for glazing should be composed mostly of water with small amounts of pigment. Opaque paint is easy to glaze with because the pigment lies of the paper's surface. The glaze does not actually alter the pigment underneath it; you will see the color and value of the underpainting reflecting through the glaze. Any paint pigment can be used for glazing if a couple of precautions are followed. First you must work slowly. Only slight changes are necessary with each glaze application, so make your changes in gradual degrees. Mix your glazing solution of water and pigment, then test the potency on a small piece of the same kind of paper you plan to work on, which I call a "trial patch." You should paint only one application or layer at a time. Allow the paint to dry completely between applications. You can judge the success of an application only when it is dry. | ||
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| J.R. Koser, WW, ASMA
657 Glenwood Drive, Fullerton, CA 92832 Tele: (714) 871-1836 E-Mail: bkoser 4213@aol.com |
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