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Author: Scott_Burkett, Contributing Editor
| Here you'll note a small travel-size bottle of Grumbacher Copal Medium; my medium of choice. Copal medium accelerates the drying of the paint (actually, dries the binder in the paint; linseed oil, etc.). Copal also adds a nice glossy sheen to the paint. Something I prefer.
I have also laid out a small set of palette cups, which are securely fastened to my wooden palette. To the right is a small brushpot filled with odorless Turpenoid. You could just as easily substitute this with mineral spirits, turpentine, or something similar. Also set out and ready to go are a painting knife and a palette knife. Oddly enough, I ended up doing most of the painting with the larger rather than smaller of the knives. Finally, you see a number of tubes of yellow hues to the bottom right of my palette. I purposely did not choose to use an out-of-the-tube pre-mixed green, as the green elements of this piece serve to harmonize well with the red poppies (red and green are complementary colors!), thus making it necessary to mix my own. |
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| I wasn't really sure which yellow would harmonize or simply look the best with cadmium red, based on what I could see in the original photo. So, I decided to do a little test. This is a nifty exercise which will not only help you select the "right" colors for a painting, but also provide some hands-on training with mixing colors.
In the photo above, you can see that I’ve moved my cobalt blue and cadmium red off to the side, and have laid out 8 different variations of yellow. Above each tube, I've squeezed out a SMALL tic-tac sized dab of paint. (Why waste it? Just a dab will do). Actually, if you open the tube, press it slightly against your palette, squeeze gently, then pull off, that should about do it. For those of you who are playing along at home, the colors above are: - Utrecht Naples Yellow Hue - Winsor & Newton Indian Yellow - Winsor & Newton Naples Yellow - Old Holland Yellow Ochre Light - Winsor & Newton Yellow Ochre - Winsor & Newton Winsor Lemon - Gamblin Hansa Yellow Medium - Utrecht Cadmium Yellow Deep Had tubes laying around of notably other cadmium yellow variants not been empty or near so, I would have used those as well. A succinct reminder that I am behind in my shopping supplies. :) |
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| Here is a closer shot, showing how small these "dabs" of paint are. Again, there is no need to squeeze out a ton of paint here, we are just doing a little test! |
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| I then took a small dab of cobalt blue (about the same size as the yellow swatches) and mixed it in with each of the yellow swatches. This formed 8 nice piles of varying greens. |
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| Finally, here you see the full spectrum of colors I have created. Some of the greens appear a bit bluer or browner than others in this image, but I could see the subtle differences being there in person and up close. If you have trouble seeing the green – just add a bit more yellow to the PIQ (pile-in-question). :)
Of course, now the trick is to figure out which green to use! |
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