The colour theory and how to mix your paints in watercolour by Paul Clark

Good morning, afternoon or evening, wherever you are. I'm Paul Clark and today we're get... Oh, it's all a bit grey, which is a shame because today I wanted to talk to you about the wonderful world of colour. Now that's more like it. Maybe down a bit. Let's get going. I've been teaching watercolour now for nearly 30 years, but I find the subject of colours and what colours to buy has the potential to be very confusing. So what I'm going to do today is to really simplify things and just bring it back to the basics. So the good news is that watercolours mix beautifully. There's no better medium for it. They're just made for it. So what I'm going to do is to start with a little story. Many, many years ago, just after the Roman invasion of Britain, I decided that I needed to learn watercolour. So what I did was, like most people, I bought a load of books on the subject and researched it. But I always found when it got to the subject of colour theory, it always got confusing. Terms such as complementary, tertiary, neutrals, temperature, values, hue. Hue? I don't know what he's got to do with it. So to be honest, I was bewildered. So my next step was to go and join a painting class. So off I went to evening classes at my local college with all my materials. And just like everybody else, I proudly laid out my colours, ready and willing. Now the first thing Mrs Grumbleweed said, now that wasn't her name, but I can't really remember, was, you don't need all of these. All we're going to use are these three. And it's one of the best things Mrs Grumblewick ever taught me. And I still teach this today. So let's just step back a few stages. I'm going to take you now through the basic principles of colour theory. Now some of you will know this already, but it's always worth a recap. The hue simply refers to a pure colour name, whether it's green, yellow, red, etc. Intensity refers to the brilliance or strength of the colour. The colour temperature refers to whether a colour is warm or cool. So with our reds, all our warm colours, and our oranges and yellows, our blues being the cool colours. And even with greens, you can see we have warm greens and cool greens. I'm sure we can all remember our primary colours from school. Blue, red, and of course yellow. A good way to remember our primary colours is that they can't be mixed from any other colours. So theoretically we can mix these to get any colour in the world. So just think of those hideously overpriced cartridges we buy for our inkjet printers. Cyan, magenta, and yellow. Blue, red, yellow. And from these we can print out full colour photographs. So the principle is exactly the same. Now for our secondary colours. If you took a 50-50 mix of blue and red, you'd get purple or violet. And if you took a 50-50 mix of red and yellow, you'd get orange. And a 50-50 mix of blue and yellow, of course you'd get green. Next are our tertiary colours, which are a mixture of our primaries and secondaries. Blue-purple, red-purple, red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, and finally blue-green. Our complementary colours are those that sit opposite each other on the colour wheel. Blue and orange, green and red, and yellow and purple. Here I hope you can see with our complementaries when they are painted next to each other they do literally complement each other. In a painting a good example of this would be if you were to paint, say, a country scene made up of mainly greens and you dropped in a few red poppies, they would literally pop against the background. Just think of something like Monet's poppy fields. In this painting I've used shades of blues and oranges to create this complementary feel. Neutralising colour is when you mix two complementaries together. So if you had a purple and added a touch of yellow, it would surprisingly dull it down to create a lovely grey. Now you might say I already have a tube of neutral tint, but it won't be as nice as one that you've mixed. It's the same with the complementaries green and red. You get a neutral brown. I always love to mix my browns. Going back to what Mrs Grumbleweed taught us, she only allowed us to use three colours all term, and this is something that I still teach my beginners today. And now I'm going to tell you three reasons why I think it's so important that you learn starting to use the three colour theory. Number one, it's a wonderful education in understanding the theory of colour, no matter which direction you go in art. Just to look out at a sky for instance and say to yourself, that's a beautiful blue, how would I mix it? What colours are in there? Looking at a tree and you can look at the green. Is it a warm green? Is it a cool green? How would I mix it? So by learning the three colour theory, it'll just teach you everything about colour and give you a wonderful foundation. Number two, if you paint from the three, your pictures will have a natural balance and harmony to them. All the colours will be sympathetic with each other. Now often when I have some of my students come to me for the first time and they show me some of the paintings they've done, there'll be a green which is being painted straight out of a tube which just doesn't belong with the rest of the painting and you can see that it hasn't been mixed. So if you learn to mix, I say your pictures will have this natural harmony to them. Now here are some examples of some paintings that I've done in class and all of these have just been painted from three colours and hopefully you can see that they have a nice sympathy, a nice natural feeling. And the third reason is granulation. Now I've talked a lot about this in my video of Painting Skies, link in the description. Now granulation is something which I personally love. What it is, is that each colour has a different weight of pigment. The blues particularly, cobalt blue, French ultramarine blue, have a heavier pigment and what tends to happen is the colour will sink to the bottom of the paper giving this nice flecky granulated feel. Now if you mix your colours you'll find, for instance a purple is a classic example, the blue and the red will slightly part as it begins to dry on your paper and you get this lovely mottling granulated effect which I think is such an important feature of watercolour painting. In these examples shown here just mixed from red, yellow and blue you can see the blue particularly has dropped to the bottom of the paper and given this lovely mottled effect. So what sort of colours do we need to buy? Now a lot of this does purely depend on what type of artist you are. So if you're more of an abstract or a flower painter or paint more illustration sort of style then true to life colours aren't so important. Myself who paints more realistic art or more representational art then I like to have colours which are more true to what we see. So the three colours that I always have in my collection and these are the same three colours that Mrs Grumblechuck taught me all those years ago are the classic cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson and cobalt blue. Now I know a lot of manufacturers call the names of colours different terms, different names but those three colours will be available from everyone and they've been going hundreds of years. What I find about these three is that you get a beautiful variety of colours. The greens for instance mixture of the yellow and the blue because I always mix my greens, never use green straight out of a tube but those two cad yellow and cobalt blue with touches of red in when you need it make beautiful greens. Alizarin crimson which is a cool red mixes beautifully with cobalt blue to make wonderful purples and also mixes really well with cadmium yellow making lots of lovely gold colours. So in my book Techniques and Tutorials for the Complete Beginner all the lessons in here are using the three colour theory but obviously as you progress as an artist you'll add your own colours you'll have your own favourites that you use so please put down in the description below colours that you couldn't be without because here as well as my three that I always use are some of my favourites that I couldn't be without. So I'm not going to talk about any particular brands or makes this is just purely about the colours that'll be coming soon in a video. To start with they're my three primaries which are always there in the same place my cobalt blue, alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow and I'd also like to have my cadmium orange and a yellow ochre great for mixing sandy colours. Next is a lovely deep dark prussian blue then we have our hooker's green named after a victorian botanical illustrator and not a lady of the night. My dioxidine purple which is a lovely colour for painting flowers. This is my phthalo blue which is an outrageously bright colour which looks great dropped in nice mediterranean seas. Then I have my burnt umber a nice earthy colour cerulean blue which I couldn't be without which I use to mix into skies and last but not least my Payne's grey which is a lovely bluey grey which I use for darkening colours. So I really hope you've enjoyed today's tutorial if you have please leave a comment down there and I'm going to show you some high-end computer graphics I've done here. I did all the programming myself so please like and subscribe it really does make a difference. So thank you all again hope to see you again soon and it's bye from me.