Into the Deep Purple

Amethyst Heart

 Even though it is my favorite color, I don't have a lot of tubes of purple paint in my paint box simply because it is a "secondary color" and it is often easy to mix a wide range of lovely shades from red and blue.

I do have a couple pre-mixed purple paints that I consider absolutely essential though, Dioxizine purple and Acra Violet. Dioxizine purple is a wonderfully deep, sheer purple, it mixes well with other colors and adds shadowy depth. I especially like it for painting dark purple irises. Acra Violet, is an incredibly versatile red purple that can add so much vibrancy to a range of flowers from red, pink and purple.

Arranging my purple paints from cool to warm.

Since I am exploring what the paints in my paintbox can do, I wanted to test out mixing my red and blues to see what kind of variety of purples were possible. I had to start with classifying my reds from cool to warmest so I would know where to start. I already tested out all the blues, see the "Shades of Blue" blog post from January. Again, I learned you can't judge a color by it's paint tube, some reds I thought were more cool were actually more warm, and visa-versa. After I painted a swatch of color onto paper, it was much easier to classify once I could see the colors next to each other.

Re-arranging my red paints from cool to warm.

 

My blue paints arranged cool to warm.

After I sorted my red colors, I mixed my coolest red and coolest blue, then warmest red and warmest blue to see what kind of range of purples I had. The biggest surprise for me was my two warmest colors yielded a dark gray that wasn't very purple at all! Good to know.

Comparing the extremes, coolest and warmest.

 Some of the my favorite purples were mixed from the middle range of warm red+blue or cool red+blue, not the extremes at either end.

Nice purple mixes, somewhere in the middle.

Next was the painting challenge, what subject could possibly suit this wide range of purples? Eventually I decided on an amethyst stone, which seemed very appropriate since it is often considered a traditional birthstone for February.

Amethyst Heart, first layers of paint.

 Although I was really happy that I was able to use almost all the shades of purple I mixed, including that surprising gray, I really felt like the painting could use more work. Adjusting the values would make it more unified and improve the illusion of a sparkling cut stone. I wrote this blog at the end of February and hoped to post it for that month, but I had to make a decision. Do I post the painting as is and on time, or do I improve the painting to how I envisioned it and post in March? What do you think? First heart above, finished heart below.

Amethyst Heart, finished!

I heard an interesting point of view recently from a person I admire, YouTube's Sci-Show host and creator, Hank Green. He said he is able to accomplish so many creative projects because he focuses on getting them to 80 percent perfect and then doesn't worry about that last 20 if it isn't necessary. He is right, that last 20 percent can take a surprising amount of time and may not even improve things that much!

At first I thought I could move forward and post a painting that I felt was at 80 percent, but eventually I chose not to. Even though I think the initial painting did illustrate what I was trying to accomplish, I honestly really wanted that last 20 percent!

Now I'm glad I waited because the finished painting makes me very happy when I look at it. I hope you will enjoy this sparkly purple heart in March as much as I do.

Happy creating!

>^-^<

Tina

 

Full page view of my color tests, 8.5 x 5.5 inch notebook.

 

Shades of Blue

Snow Bear contemplates the Blue.

 I have several tubes of acrylic paints in my paint box and they are a motley crew! Paint I bought in college, Jeff’s acrylic collection was added to mine when we got married, paint that was inherited from a friend of Jeff’s parents, and a selection I purchased when I was reading Helen Van Wyck’s wonderful book on color mixing.

I made a New Year’s art resolution: to have a better understanding of what tools I actually have in my tool kit. The first step I learned from Marie Kondo, get everything out and look at it!

All the colors arranged in a color wheel.

Black, white, gold and silver in a separate category.

Looking at the color on the tubes is only part of the story, the next step is to put the paint on paper in it's full strength, then mix with increasing amounts of white and let them tell me something about their personality.

Beginning with Blue

Initial guess at the color arrangement.

 

I arranged the blue tubes in how I thought they would fit on the color wheel, ranging from the most purple/red to the most green/yellow.

I included three sets of the same colors, three ultramarine blue and two cerulean blue from different manufacturers and two cobalt blue tubes that varied in price. I was curious how much difference there be between the low cost vs. higher priced paint.

Twelve Blues and White

 I definitely learned a few things I didn’t expect! The Golden brand ultramarine was a shade more lavender than the Liquitex ultramarine. The Daler-Rowney went the lightest lavender when I added the same amount of white. The Liquitex was the most sheer and least opaque of the three.

 The Golden brand Cerulean had a lot more staining strength than the Windsor & Newton, which was much more sheer.

 The less expensive Daler-Rowny cobalt blue was more opaque and seemed to have some white tint in it compared to the more expensive M.Graham paint. You do get what you pay for.

Anthraquinone Blue had a lot more in common with the Prussian blue. I had read that I could swap it out for ultramarine! I don't see how, it is a much more greyed down denim blue than I expected. It's a beautiful color, but I don't see how it would behave the same as ultramarine when mixing it with other colors for a painting.

 

I also learned that my initial arrangement of the paint tubes wasn’t correct when I actually got the paint on paper. Phthaloblue is the blue that leans the most towards green/yellow, not cerulean.

Swap the phthalo and the cerulean!

 

Phthaloblue finds the right place.

The last thing I was curious about was to see if I could create a whole painting just using all my blue paint and white. The result was the "Snow Bear in Shades of Blue" painting posted at the first of this entry, I used all twelve blues and I think it turned out pretty good.

I learned a lot from this experiment and it was fun. I would encourage anyone to get out what paint you have become more acquainted with it’s character and personality a little better.

Happy Creating!

Tina

Tip: I learned that drawing a straight line with some equal sized squares makes the color comparison easier to see, plus it just looks nicer.

My full sketchbook page.

P.S. Yes, the snow bear does exist. I built him in celebration of finally getting some more snow! I did use artistic license and remove all the houses in our neighborhood to improve his view of the mountains.