Colour Qualities
Each
colour contains four qualities, (1) It’s Hue, e.g., blue, red, yellow. (2)
Value; light or dark. (3)Purity; i.e. the Hue is free from any white ingredient.
(4) Temperature; the difference between warm and cold colours. We try to mix
colours to obtain one or more of these qualities.
When
trying to match a colour, choose the nearest you have to it, then mix another
colour to get nearer to that required colour. If possible only use two colours,
a third will start making the colour muddy.
Water
colours are made lighter by the addition of plain water or white. The addition
of water will give a transparent effect as it allows the white paper to show
through. Adding white, a more solid colour is produced, less transparent a more
opaque.
The
brilliance of a colour can be decreased much easier than to increase the
brilliance. The tip is to work with brilliant colours.
We
can degrade or partially neutralize or grey a colour by adding black, brown,
grey or neutral colour. Another way is by mixing it’s complementary colour
with it. Complementaries are (yellow, Violet), (blue,orange), (red, green).
Colour
can be flat or graduated. Flat is uniform colour, where as the latter is
can be lighter or darker, warmer and cooler, bright or dull. “Broken colour”
is colour that is varied by another colour broken into it.
You can mix
paint on your palette or on the paper. Using the palette the colours
can be mixed uniformly. On the paper the colour fuse together or are worked
together without preliminary mixing on the palette.