Color Mixing

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

The visual artist who works with color has a tall, but very interesting mountain to climb. We start by intuitively playing with colors as children. Our choices are free and somewhat arbitrary. Fun. Our senses are not well-developed to perceive subtleties in shades or values at first, and so we paint that way. As we grow, our innate sensitivity to all things visual grows and our appreciation of the vast world of color begins to develop. The more we look, the more we tend to see. The more paintings made, the greater the proficiency and sensitivity to color. It is a positive feedback loop which is never-ending.

There are two ways to learn about colors and color mixing—trial and error, or the science of color theory. Ann and I both had the good fortune to have taken color theory classes in art school. They provided a solid theoretical foundation for the work of mixing paint that was to come. Color theory provides a framework, based on the color wheel, for understanding color, color tempe…