Color Mixing

There's nothing like a good basic review of color and color mixing. Our park here in FL is SO blessed with having some very experienced and sharing people. Al is one of those folks. Al works primarily in oils and pastels but he is proficient in watercolor and acrylic as well. He is what I would call a "classically" good artist. He has taught art and he knows his stuff! The color mixing update was well attended (about 20 people) which is about what our art room here at Hawthorne Park can handle! We are so fortunate to have a real place to make art that we can call our own!

One of the basic messages today was that it is just not necessary to buy so many paints. You really can do a good job with a basic set of paints. Al's basic oil and acrylic palette consists of 4 red...two warm and two cool. Cad red light, cad red medium, quinacridone Rose, Alizarin crimson. one yellow: cadmium yellow light and two blues..thalo blue and ultramarine blue. He shows an orange on the color wheel but he says he usually mixes his oranges. He also likes 4 earth colors: yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna and burnt umber. He really feels you can do a lot of good painting with just those paint colors! We practiced mixing some interesting greens! His watercolor palette is similar although he uses a yellow aureolin for his yellow. And he adds thalo green to the watercolor palette (and drops off burnt umber and yellow ochre).