Celebrating Color

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How Do You Mix Gray with Purple?

May 18, 2021 By Carol McIntyre

Learning how to mix various grays, is important in our painting world. We need de-saturated or gray-like colors give our eyes calming places to rest. These wonderful colors also help to make our more intense or saturated colors sing.  What do I mean by GRAY?

I am referring to grays that carry a hue, such as a green-gray or a blue-gray. I am also referring to a gray that either leans toward a warm gray (carries a titch of brown) or a cool gray (carries a titch of blue.)

It is important to note that none of these grays are created by mixing white with black. By the way, I never mix gray using black and white because it is dull….it has little life to it.color mixing, how to mix grays with purple

When I begin to mix grays, I always ask myself, “What is the color opposite of my base color?” As you know, the opposite of purple is yellow. There are basically two yellows available to us. They are a green-yellow and an orange-yellow. Which yellow will yield the gray I am looking for? Watch the video below for the answer.

Please pass the vlog along to others who may be interested.

Gratefully and colorfully yours,

Carol

color mixing, how to mix gray using purple

Filed Under: Art Material & Painting Tips, Color Mixing, Tips & Concepts Tagged With: Color Mixing, Color Theory

How Did I Create a Solo Show During COVID?

March 15, 2021 By Carol McIntyre

Back in December 2019, the gallery owner of G44 Gallery, Colorado Springs, surprised me with an invitation to have a solo show in 2021. Not only was I honored and excited, but I also had a strong visceral reaction of “Yes! That will be perfect timing.” Ha! Little did any of us know what the future had in store for us.

How did I begin creating for this upcoming solo show?

At the time of the invitation, I had just begun experimenting with a new medium — cold wax with oil — followed by an excellent cold wax workshop taught by Tish Lacy Reed in January. Subsequently, I dove in with great gusto. At this point – about the Feb/March time frame – I wasn’t thinking about a series or my show, I was dedicated to learning about cold wax with oil. create a solo show

During my 30+ years of painting, I have worked in watercolor, pencil, oil, pastel and acrylics, and in that sequence. During each medium, I focused on just that one medium. In other words, I have never jumped from one to the other and back. Why? Because I wanted to get to know the medium as well as I could and enjoy all of its characteristics. My subject matter also evolved along with these medium changes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Color Mixing, Tips & Concepts, Inner Artistic Journeys Tagged With: abstract artwork, abstract painting fused with realism, an artist's musings, artistic process, Creative Process

What are My Top 5 Color Mixing Blogs?

February 10, 2021 By Carol McIntyre

During the past few months, I have been cleaning up my website. What do I mean? I ventured into a potentially scary place to see if I had any broken URLs. I discovered I had hundreds of them throughout my site. YIKES! Apparently Google does not like this. I don’t know I was being punished/neglected, but I assume that I was.

 

Once I recovered from a sense of overwhelm, I dove in to tackle these broken links. It was a slow and arduous task, as I had over 400 broken URLs…OMG! However, it also took me down memory lane and gave me the opportunity to see what I had written during these past many years. I was astounded to learn my first blog post was in 2010 and I have over 210 blog posts. Cool!

 

Then I thought I would re-visit my Google Analytics to ascertain my top color mixing blogs. Again, I was not prepared for what I would learn. As you know, most of my content is about color, but it is always interesting to see which content is searched the most frequently.

Since not all of you are aware of the amount of content I have on my site, I thought I would share with you the top five posts. The below montage provides some clues.color mixing blogsWhich do you think are the most popular color mixing blogs?  ~~~drum roll~~~~~

My Top 5 Color Mixing Blogs Are:

#1. Red and Blue Don’t Make Purple

https://www.celebratingcolor.com/red-blue-dont-make-purple-2/

#2. The Four Steps to Mixing Sage Green of the Southwest

https://www.celebratingcolor.com/four-steps-mixing-sage-green

#3.  What is the Complement of Pink?

https://www.celebratingcolor.com/what-is-complement-of-pink/

#4. How do You Mix Pink?

https://www.celebratingcolor.com/how-mix-pink/

#5. How to Make Yellow Dark

https://www.celebratingcolor.com/how-to-make-yellow-dark/

Are you surprised? I know I am.

While you are visiting these color mixing blogs, you are invited to search via the categories located on the right sidebar for a topic that may interest you.

BTW, my website is all cleaned up, yeh! Sure hope this makes the search engines happy.

Please share with fellow artists and friends.

PS If you would like to venture into the broken URL arena, this is the free software that I used. http://brokenlinkcheck.com

color mixing blogs

Filed Under: Color Mixing, Tips & Concepts, Inner Artistic Journeys

How Do You Mix Turquoise?

November 21, 2020 By Carol McIntyre

A few of you have asked me, “How do you mix turquoise?” Even though I include many blues in my paintings, I don’t think I have consciously mixed turquoise. Curiosity got the best of me.

When we think of turquoise, many of us probably think of the stone. As you can see here, there is a fairly large range of hues.mix turquoiseThis got me thinking. What is the difference between aqua, turquoise and teal? Google did not disappoint. Here is one photo my researched revealed. I find it interesting because I have probably referred to all three of these hues as “turquoise” as some time or another . How about you?

mix turquoise

Here is One Approach to How to Mix Turquoise?

I did a little experimenting and determined the three main tube colors needed for mixing turquoise are: blue, white and yellow. The next questions are: which blues and which yellows? Intuitively, I made an assumption that my blue would be a green-blue and my yellow would be a green-yellow. However, after further thought, I decided I needed to include a red-blue and an orange-yellow to see what would happen. I wanted to see if I would be surprised. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Color Mixing, Tips & Concepts, Color Theory Made Easy Tagged With: Color Mixing, Color Theory, painting tips

How to Mix a Bright Purple!

October 28, 2020 By Carol McIntyre

You want to mix a purple, so you grab your red and blue. Correct? But then you mix your colors and it is not the purple you want. Why?

I have heard many  artists – no matter the medium they use – complain that they do not know how to mix a bright purple. There are three main reasons, IMHO.

  1. Painters are not consciously aware of the color bias of their reds and blues.
  2. Too many painters have alizarin crimson on their palettes.
  3. Painters do not know the significant role complementary colors play when mixing all colors ….it is not embedded into their brains.

What Does Color Bias Have to Do with How to Mix Bright Purple?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Art Material & Painting Tips, Color Mixing, Tips & Concepts

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