Tips for Mixing Darks and Shadow Colors
A few tips for mixing darks and shadow colors in watercolor, including shadows on yellow and red objects.
Color and Color Mixing
Articles and videos on color and color-mixing.
Creativity Booster— Try Improv Painting!
Here’s an exercise to help you stimulate your creativity, loosen up or find your own style.
Color and Color Mixing | Creative Energy Journaling | Finding Your Style | Planning Your Own Watercolors
Easily Create Symmetrical Circular Designs (January 2023 Art Invitation)
Make your own symmetrical circular designs for mandalas or other circular paintings. All you need are a plate and a piece of office paper! This video shows you how to do it.
How Do I Paint Tan? (beige/khaki/sand/bark/fur/feathers/skin)
An easy tip for mixing lively, interesting and natural-looking browns, tans, skin tones, fur, feathers, etc.
It’s Not All About Hue – Imposters and Chameleons
Color-mixing is often discussed as if the only consideration is getting “the right color”, but watercolor pigments each have their own physical and chemical properties. This video presents some activities to help you develop a more sophisticated understanding of color-mixing so you become better at choosing and mixing pigments to create the artistic effects—including perceived color—you desire.
Crazy Colorful Pears
Fun exercises in glazing and negative painting. Perfect for times when you feel like painting, but you’re too stressed or tired to focus on challenging work. A chance to play with color and different ways of applying paint while you practice essential watercolor skills.
41 min.
Using Colorways
Even if you do as I do and have a “(home)base palette” of 8 or 9 colors, there are times when you want to bring in other colors for a particular painting or series. Here’s how I do it to make sure I still have color harmony.
Apr 2019: Fifty Shades of Grey—The G-Rated Version
I demonstrate some of my favorite mixtures for grey, including a secret for mixing greys to create a sense of warm light glowing behind the edges of clouds.
Phthalo Green—How To Tame It
In the last post, I offered some tips for mixing natural-looking landscape greens, the first of which was “avoid tube greens involving phthalo green”. So, what do you do with the phthalo green (and mixtures using it) you already have? The secret is to tame it a bit so it works for you instead of…
Better Landscape Greens
The weather is beautiful here. It’s the time of year when a lot of us are feeling that pull to take our paints and sketchbooks outside. It’s also the time of year that a lot of people struggle with GREEN! Do the greens in your landscapes look flat and unnatural? The likely culprit is a…
Go (a Little) Wild!—How to Loosen Up (Just a Bit) in Watercolor
Are you a control freak when you make art? Or does your inner child go wild? Most of us want to make art that combines structure and spontenaity, but that’s not easy! In workshops and classes at all levels, when we go around the room and talk about what we want to get out of…
Explore Your Pigments with a Color Wheel—Primaries, Secondaries, Tertiaries
When I’m laying a wash, I want to focus my attention on creating color mingles, wet-in-wet effects and edges that are just the right degree of softness. So many things that will only happen if the timing is just right! I want design and drawing and color all worked out ahead of time, so I don’t…