On Making Color

This page is dedicated to the observing and mixing oil paint from reference. That is from life or photo. It’s based on the 12 color spectrum of oil colors.

Where to start. My guess would be to understand how this palette was made. I started with the 3 Primary colors of Red, Yellow and Blue. I then made the Secondary colors by mixing the primaries wit one another. Red and Yellow make Orange. Red and Blue make Violet or Purple. Blue and Yellow make Green.

Here we start withe the idea of compliments. Red and green Are Complimentary Colors. When we mix compliments we are making Neutral color. Yellow and Violet are Complimentary, Blue and Orange are complimentary. Remember this concept of making new neutralized color with compliments.

Now we start making analogous colors or Teriaries. To make Red Orange we mix Red and Orange. We mix Red with VIolet to make Red Violet. Blue and Violet made Blue Violet. Blue and Green make Blue Green. And so on… Green and Yellow make Yellow Green. Yellow and Orange make Yellow Orange. Whew!

Now we have the twelve colors of the Spectrum Palette.

At this point I want to introduce thee concept of (Full Intensity Color SuperScript 7). SemiNeutral Color (Color SuperScript 5) and Hue or Neutral Color (Color SuperScript 3) .
It may be a bit hard to follow so hang on. The idea of using this triangle above comes from John Sloan’s On Drawing and Painting (Dover Books). In it he references the Dudeen Triangle.Another reference for making color is The painters Palette, A Theory of Yone Relations, an Instrument of Expression by Denman Waldo Ross. A couple of old books by old dead guys. But very interesting,

As long as I’m introducing things here how about color value. I like to think of a color a Color_Value.

This is idealized color made to find a theoretical value curve. My live chart TK does not confirm exactly to this. Notice how there are squares with circles in them. They represent the value of the color out of the tube. The sclerosis on the left is a seven value scale. Black and white are not represented here. Let’s call these squares as numbers 1 to 7 in decending order. The Yellow is of value 1 here.and Violet is 7. All the circles are on a nice sort of sine wave. Surf’s up.

Why is _value so important. In mixing oil paint we are using the subtractive method of mixing color. Simply put when you mix a color with another the value changes. If you know your values it minimize that giant problem Say you a neutral sized orange at value 3. your might mix Blue at value 3 with it.

So _value is very important

You can do this exersize yourself. Explain and diagram