Studying my colours

Recently I’ve noticed of the worst features I could have in my life: I am a workaholic. But this workaholism is not about Art, studying French of other things I like to do. It’s all about my work, which is not even close to visual arts. If I have a huge project to complete in two weeks, I’ll complete it in a week and then get another one. I feel myself exhausted, the lack of sleep doesn’t make me happy, I don’t see my friends as often as I would like… I am not even mentioning my hobbies and a simple desire to lie down on a couch with a good book and a cup of tea!

So, I decided that it’s time for a big change. I am tired that my work rules my life and I’d like for it to be vice versa.

I’ve been studying my colours. In one of the blogs I’ve read about the exercises students do in the College of Illustration, so I decided to follow and do them by myself. It was a lot of fun, and I really discovered something new about my palette, my preferences when choosing the colours and how to handle the colours I really don’t like.

The first task was to mix as many greens as possible having only primary colours. I chose Cadmium Yellow, Cadmiun Red and Ultraviolet.

As you can see, some of these are green, some of them are not J. But still, I’ve realized how many you can have having only THREE basics! I always read all those colour theories, but I never implemented the advice on practice. And now, when I did, it was like a curtain fell from my eyes. It’s amazing! I can have greens. Nice brows, rich greys, calm violets…I was blind and now I can see them all in those three boxes.

Then I wanted to see what kind of tints I’d get using other three types of primaries. I chose Lemon Yellow, some weird Red (I think, it was Crimson Red, but I’m not sure) and Prussian Blue. The result was completely different:

You see, it’s not the same! These colours are more intense, and I think, they are more bluish than the first batch, which is yellowish to me.

And I have more yellows and blues and reds! So I could do even more.

I decided to mix my two main yellows (Cadmiun Yellow and Lemon Yellow) with all blues I had.

I got some nice variations; I know I could get even more just by adjusting proportions of yellow and blue in a tint.

The second task was the colour circle. I did it with watercolour. It’s not perfect, I did it wet-on-wet, so the colours mixed by themselves.

To the right I played with complementary colours: for example, I used red, and by adding some green I gradually tried to get pure green at the end. Off course, the green was mixed by myself. I was still using the first combination of primaries.

The last trick I’ve read in one of my books. The thing is to teach yourself to work with colours you don’t really like. By glancing at my palette I can state that I hate all reds, Lemon Yellow and Emerald Green . So, I used LY and EG as basics and by mixing with many colours of my palette I tried to see what other colours I could have.

The center is a basic colour. The inside circle is a mix; outside circle is a colour I’m mixing with.
It had WOW-effect on me. Now my palette expanded. So if you don’t like the colour, you just have not learnt how to cook it .