Painting for Beginniners: Choose Your Colours
Mar 10, 2010 Painting
There’s all kinds of advice out there for beginners wanting to choose their paint colours. It can be overwhelming, and if you took everyone’s advice, you’d go home with every tube in the store!
Well, I’m going to add my voice to the racket. The palette I am recommending is a very versatile and basic one. You will be able to mix nearly any colour you need. This is the palette I use for my paintings, and while I don’t use every colour in every painting, I have used all of these colours consistently throughout the years.
As you gain experience in painting, you will learn what colours you are more drawn to and can refine your palette accordingly. Your choice of colours might also depend on what you are going to paint. There are recommended palettes for portrait painting and for landscape painting.
For those interested in oil or acrylic painting, but not sure where to start, here is a selection of colours that I’ve found necessary and useful. I’ve also indicated either the warmth or coolness of the paint, or which colour it leans more to.
Colours
- Cadmium Red (orangish)
- Alizarin Crimson (purplish)
- Cadmium Yellow (orangish)
- Hansa Yellow (greenish)
- Ultramarine Blue (purplish)
- Pthalo Blue (greenish)
Neutrals
- Yellow Ochre (warm)
- Burnt Umber (warm)
- Burnt Sienna (warm)
- Raw Umber (cool)
- Raw Sienna (cool)
- Titanium White
A Note on Black
Rather than buying black paint, I would recommend that you mix a black. Black from a tube has no colour in it, and is very flat. When you use other colours to mix black, you get a hue that has depth and dimension. Pthalo blue and raw umber mix to create a colour very near black.
Watercolour
I apologize if this seems to emphasize oil and acrylic, with watercolour more like an afterthought. The thing is, I don’t know a lot about watercolour, so I won’t pretend to give advice about it! For those of you interested in watercolour, here is a short article about choosing a watercolour palette.
Tags: acrylic painting, colours, oil painting
Easy Composition Tips: Thumbnail Sketches
Whether you’re drawing or painting, you need to consider the composition of your work. Composition is the arrangement of the visual elements on your picture plane; or, where you put things. You need to take into consideration the relationship of the elements to each other, and the relationship of the elements to the edge of your drawing or painting.
Composition can help communicate feeling and meaning. The arrangement of objects can be balanced and harmonious and convey a sense of calm. Or they can be awkward and convey a sense of tension. You need to use this to your advantage!
Even if you’re working with a single subject, like a portrait, you need to think about composition. Where will the face go on the page? In the centre, off to the side, near the edge? Each arrangement will slightly alter the feel of the finished piece.
But how can you figure out the best composition? That’s where thumbnail sketches come in.
Thumbnails are small-scale drawings that let you play around with composition without investing a huge amount of time and effort into a single artwork.
How to use Thumbnails
First of all, you want to consider all the elements that will be in your piece. Below are some examples of thumbnails I did for an upcoming painting. I knew I was working with a horizon, a tree, two giraffes and the sun. My goal was to find the best arrangement for these elements.
Thumbnail drawings should only be a few inches big, but make sure they are the same scale as your finished piece. I know that my painting will be three feet by two feet, so I made each thumbnail three inches by two inches. This way, I know that the elements of the painting will fit into the thumbnail the same way as the painting.
Once you know what you’re working with, and you draw yourself several to-scale boxes, start playing around. Try as many different arrangements you can think of. This lets you see exactly how things will relate to eachother without just imagining it. This is important because artists are visual and need to see.
Choosing a Thumbnail
Pick a thumbnail that feels like it works. This really depends on the feelings you’re going for in your work. This is the thumbnail I chose for my composition. It is balanced and harmonious, each element is comfortably placed and nothing feels awkward. It also follows the rules of thirds.
We all know how it feels to suddenly get the perfect idea for your next piece. You’re excited and anxious to get going. It can be tempting to jump right in. But you’ll find that your finished piece will be better if you take a few minutes to do a little planning and find the best composition. The effort is well worth the result!
Tags: art tips, better drawings, composition
Painting: Watercolour vs. Acrylic vs. Oil
Mar 3, 2010 Painting
One of the first decisions you will need to make as an artist learning to paint is which paint to use. There are three main choices, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. First let’s look at the pros and cons of each, then I’ll give you my opinion on where it’s best to start.
Watercolour
These paints are water soluble and clean up easily with warm water and a bit of soap. Even after the paint has dried completely, it can be re-activated with water. This means that you brushes will survive if you forget to wash them right away after a painting session! This also means that your paints can be used again and again, without any wastage. The most common painting surface for these paints is watercolour paper.
Watercolours are said to be the hardest paints to master. Because of their transparency, you can’t just paint over an area if you make a mistake. Watercolour techniques involve working in layers from light to dark, and you can use water to dilute the paints and create transparent washes.
Acrylics
Acrylics are also a water-based paint, but unlike watercolours, once they dry they stay dry. The brushes clean easily with soap and water, but must be cleaned right away. If paint dries on your brush, it will not come off! This also means that any paint left on your palette at the end of a session will dry out and become unusable unless you can seal it.
Acrylic paints have a very shiny, plasticy finish. They dry flat, in spite of any texture they might have when wet. They also dry slightly darker, making it difficult to mix the colours for an already dry section of a painting.
One great thing about acrylics is their versatility. When diluted with water, you can create washes much like watercolours. When used straight from the tube, they behave more like oil paints. They also dry very quickly, letting you re-work a painting without having to wait. Of all the paints, acrylics are the most immediate.The drawback, however, is that this makes them difficult to blend smoothly.
Oils
Oil paints behave very differently from watercolours and acrylics. They are oil-based, which makes clean-up more complicated. You will need to have some kind of solvent or turpentine to clean your brushes. This substance can be dangerous (flammable) and needs to be disposed of properly.
The other difference in oils is that they take a long time to dry. In fact, they don’t actually dry at all. With watercolours and acrylics, the drying process involves the evaporation of the water within the paint. Oil paints, on the other hand, actually have a chemical reaction with oxygen, which causes them to harden. It can take weeks, to months, to even a year for to complete the process. Often, your paintings will feel dry to the touch within a day or two, but will not be dry underneath.
The great thing about this is that it lets you paint wet into wet for extended periods of time. It also means that if you forget to wash your brushes, they will probably be salvageable the next day!
Recommendation
The most important differences in oils, watercolours and acrylics to me are their drying times and the clean-up. But how do you know where to start?
This really depends on what you’re wanting to do. If you want to paint quickly and have a lot of versatility, go for acrylics. If you want to be able to work slowly and are committed to the solvents, try oils. If you like the idea of building layers, give watercolours a try.
I really believe it’s important to play and I would urge all of you to play around with each of these types of paints. You will learn the most this way and the experience will help you decide which you like better. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to do this; you can usually pick up student sets for cheap. Until you know what you like, that’s all you need.
I started painting with acrylics. The clean-up was convenient and the immediacy of the paint allowed me to learn quickly. I’ve since dabbled in watercolours and done some oil painting as well. I found that the transition from acrylics to the other paints was very easy. While watercolours aren’t for me, I there are elements of acrylics and oils that I love.
If you’re really stuck, try acrylics and go from there! Don’t forget to check out my introduction to colour theory.
Happy painting!
Tags: acrylic painting, oil painting, painting tips, watercolour painting
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