COLOUR MIXING SOLUTIONS in oils - Create 3D Effects + What's on my Palette!

How's it going? Andrew here and welcome to the studio. In this little video, I'm going to talk to you about color mixing and share with you exactly what's on my palette. Now I get a lot of questions about color mixing as well as what's on my palette exactly. So I thought this would be a great opportunity to make a little video and talk to you all about color. So without further ado, let me just run over there and grab my palette and we'll have a chat. Now if you've been watching my videos for a little while, then you'll recognize this thing straight away. This is an old gas lift stool and you can see the stool mechanism part down here with its wheels so I can roll it around the studio, but I no longer needed the stool part of it. So instead I took that off and I've attached a table easel to the top here. Now what do we have here? This is an old shelf out of a refrigerator and I've spray painted the back of it gray. Now I'm often asked as well, why do I have a gray background to the palette? Well that's simply because this allows me to gauge what my tones and my colors are doing. I can instantly tell if something's too light or if something's too dark and I can also tell if it's too far in one direction or another in terms of color. So that's really handy and the fact that it's glass makes it super easy to clean. Now you might be wondering what is this all about? Because I'm doing a lot of filming in the studio as well, this little receptacle here holds my camera batteries, memory cards, as well as holding up this light so that I can see exactly what I'm mixing and so you can see what those mixes are as well. Now on the backside of this contraption I've got some brushes, some clean brushes here that I'm using as well as some dirty brushes and a little pot to hold some medium. Now it might not be the prettiest thing in the world, but it certainly is very practical and I can wheel this just about anywhere in the studio to whatever project I'm working on at the time. Now let's go ahead and lay out some colors, but before we do, let me just share with you a quick little studio tip that is really important if you're dealing with oil paint. Now I don't know about you, but it doesn't matter how careful I am in the studio, I always end up with just a little bit of paint on my fingers. Now this wouldn't be such a big deal if we weren't using some toxic materials. Oil paint can have some heavy metals in there that could be considered carcinogenic, like lead, cobalt and cadmium for instance. We want to avoid skin contact, so I always wear a little pair of rubber gloves whenever I'm getting out oil paint or cleaning up the palette at the end of an oil painting session. Now I'm going to start things off with a little bit of Burnt Umber. This is a fantastic color and it's really handy for deep shadows. Next I've got Yellow Oxide. This color is really similar to Yellow Ochre, but it's a bit stronger. A little bit more pungent and really handy for tinting skies and creating some really nice warmth. And then we've got its relative here, Transparent Yellow Oxide. I'll use this color a lot for glazing. And then I've got Titanium White, and this is fantastic. It's a really nice, bright, opaque white and I'll use this constantly for painting landscapes. Now just a quick note on white. In recent years I had been experimenting with Zinc White, and I found this to be a really nice color for painting portraits. However, after my recent podcast with Virgil Elliott, the author of Traditional Oil Painting, I decided to change my ways. I got rid of the Zinc because upon his recommendation, Zinc is just not archival. It doesn't stand the test of time. It can lead to things like cracking and disadhesion, which can be a disaster if you want your paintings to hang around for a while. So now more and more I'm using Lead White, but when it comes to painting landscapes, especially with blocking in, I'm using a lot of Titanium. I might use some of that Lead White in the later stages of paintings. Next we've got a little bit of Cadmium Lemon, and this is a really handy color indeed. It's very strong. A little bit goes a long way. And Cadmium Red, a nice, bright red color. I'll use this one a bunch for my Australian landscapes. And then one of my favorites, Quinacridone Magenta. This is fantastic for creating some really nice, vibrant violet notes. And then we've got Ultramarine Blue. This is great for achieving some deep tones, and I'll use this a lot in skies as well. Now I am absolutely obsessed with this color, Cobalt Teal. It's almost pure turquoise in a tube. It is just fantastic. I'll use this from anything like greens in the foreground to even tinting the skies. And then finally, a little bit of Phthalo Green. Now this is a very strong color indeed. A little bit goes a long way. It's great for foliage, but also really nice for achieving a very dark tone. Now I try to stick to this order as often as possible. It actually really helps me with color mixing. So here again, we've got our earth tones above that white, and then below the white we've got our high-chroma colors there. Now by keeping to this order and having some sort of organization here, it does help me achieve cleaner mixes, but also when I'm on a roll in the studio, I'm not spending time looking for that individual blob of color. It really does speed me up. Now when I used to teach live workshops, I noticed that some of my students were just laying color out randomly across the palette, and consequently, that disorganization would end up in the painting itself. Now this here is the landscape palette that I've been using for this Milford Sound painting behind me. And you might have noticed that there's no black on here at all. That's because I mix an alternative to it. And if you've been watching my videos for a little while, then you'll know I'm a fan of that combination of burnt umber and ultramarine blue. Now let me just show you quickly how I achieve a dark tone with just these two colors. In fact, this is where painting started for me. So I'm going to take a little bit of burnt umber, and I'm going to add this ultramarine blue. And as soon as I do this, you can see that it starts dropping that tone dramatically. Now what's happening is the coolness of that ultramarine blue is annihilating the warmth of the umber, and vice versa. Now a cool little exercise to try is to take this combination and start to add a little bit of titanium white to it. Now what this should start to do is indicate whether you've got a really good balance of that ultramarine blue and burnt umber. If you've mixed those two just right, it won't appear too blue or too brown, or too warm or cool. It'll appear perfectly neutral. So this is a great little exercise if you're new to mixing color and you just want to get the hang of what paint does. Now these three colors here is where painting started for me. In fact, this was my original palette when my father was training me how to paint. It was after I got the hang of mixing that ultramarine blue and burnt umber and titanium white that I was allowed another two colors, and I was given yellow ochre and burnt sienna. Now I did mention that there was no black on this palette, so there was a pretty good equivalent there, but let me show you one more combination to mix a very dark tone. I'm going to take a little bit of this phthalo green here, a very deep and saturated green, and mix into that a little bit of the burnt umber. Now you'll notice here that it's already starting to go much darker indeed, but I need a third component here, so I'm going to add just a touch of quinacridone magenta. Now the red and the magenta is annihilating that green of the phthalo green. Now remember that the red and green are complementary opposites on the color wheel, so those two go together and they absolutely destroy each other and drop that tone very, very deep indeed. Now those are two really good combinations for black, and again, a really good place to start. Now why would I want to mix a black rather than just using it straight out of the tube? For me, it's far more interesting to use combinations of color to achieve that dark tone, because then I've got my options open and the color is versatile. With that deeper shadow there, I can push it into the green, to the magenta, or into the umber, depending on what that shadow is. Now before we carry on with any more color mixing, let me just clean off this palette so I've got a nice clean area to work with. The first thing I do is I just scrape that palette off with a palette knife and wipe off any of that excess with a paper towel. Now by just folding the paper towel, I've got something really clean to work with here. I'm going to need this in just a minute, but I've got these things. These are just baby wipes that you can buy from the grocery store. The mineral oil content in these make it really handy to clean up oil paint, and it just gets rid of that oil paint residue just like that. Now after wiping the palette down with one of these, I need to get rid of all of that residue. Mineral oil doesn't tend to dry so well, so it will affect the drying time of our oil paint. So I use this little bit of paper towel that we had earlier and just wipe up that excess. So now I've got a really clean, perfect area for mixing some more color. Now let's talk a little bit about primaries. We all started out painting with red, blue, and yellow, knowing that if we mixed these colors together, we'd make some really nice secondaries. But when we're painting, that's not often the case. So I've got here a cadmium red, an arylide yellow, and a cobalt blue. Let's just try and mix some clean secondaries with these. Now we should, if we take the blue and yellow here, we should get a really nice green. That blue and red are going to make a nice purple, and hopefully we're going to get a great orange out of these two. But is that the case? Now just bear with me, there's a reason why I want to talk to you about this, because it has to do with why I've chosen some of the colors that I have on my palette that I use for a lot of my landscape paintings. Now I'm going to begin to mix this yellow down into the cobalt blue, and those two go together to make a really nice green color. And I can see all kinds of uses for that. It could perhaps make some really good leafy greens, certainly could be used for a lot of foliage. Also, I'm going to bring this yellow down to meet that cadmium red. And here this should form a really nice vibrant orange. Now where this arrangement starts to fall apart is when I mix that red in with that cobalt blue. Now because I got such a great orange and a green out of it, hopefully I get a really nice violet too. But that's just not the case. I've ended up with something really drab and gray. It's almost brown. I couldn't see any use for that if I wanted to achieve a nice violet in a sky, for instance. What I really want are three colors that are going to make some really fantastic secondary colors. And in order to find those, we're going to need to borrow an idea from printing. Now before we start talking about picture-perfect primary colors, let me take a quick minute to tell you about this video's sponsor, Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with more than 25,000 classes in business, design, digital media, and much, much more. Premium membership gives you unlimited access so you can join the communities and classes that are just right for you. Whether you want to fuel your curiosity, creativity, or even your career, Skillshare is the perfect place to keep you learning and thriving. Now as you may know, I've used Skillshare in the past to brush up on my Photoshop skills. I took a class by Gabriel Bricky, and in the space of about 45 minutes, I went from a total novice to reasonably proficient. Now I use Photoshop a lot when it comes to designing my paintings. I'm simply in love with the digital media. I'm drawing into Photoshop using my Wacom tablet, but I just needed a helping hand to develop those skills further. Now I'm using Skillshare to learn about After Effects. I want to know how to make moving typography and do a bit of motion graphics so that I have some really cool elements to add to my video intros, for instance. And so now I'm learning with a guy named Jake Bartlett, and again, I'm finding these classes to be fantastic. Skillshare is also super affordable with annual subscriptions costing less than $10 a month. Now just to let you know, I'm only going to work with sponsors who've got a great product at a great price, and it's something that I actually use. So join more than 7 million creators learning with Skillshare. Click that link in the description down below and get yourself a free two-month trial. Now let's get back to those primary colors. Now think for a moment about your printer at home. It's using a limited palette of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, or CMYK. I've actually based this palette on that principle. And here I've got cyan, which is cobalt teal, magenta, and cadmium yellow lemon. Now with that limited palette, your printer at home can make a virtually infinite combination of colors. So I was thinking that it would make good sense to have those colors as a feature on this palette. So let's mix these primary colors together and see what kind of secondaries we can make. I'm going to take some of that cadmium lemon. Again, this is a much brighter, cleaner, and cooler color than that arylide lemon we were using earlier for this combination. We're going to take a little bit of this cobalt teal and then begin to introduce the teal in to that cadmium lemon. And already look how vibrant and beautiful and clean that green is. Now I'm going to take a little bit of this quinacridone magenta and mix it up into that cadmium lemon. And we'll see what kind of color we can achieve. Now there's some really beautiful, deep scarlet colors in there, and it almost achieves a near red as I mix that cadmium yellow in with that quinacridone magenta. And again, following the same drill, we're going to bring some of that cobalt teal in to meet the quinacridone magenta. Now as those two begin to mix with one another, we're achieving some really clean violet colors. I can definitely see a use for this when it comes to painting skies and clouds. Now I much rather these primary colors because of those clean secondaries that I can make. Certainly a lot more than that red, blue, and yellow that we were taught about in school. And that's why these colors here are a permanent feature on virtually every landscape palette that I have. Let's just get a little bit more specific here and talk about this painting of Milford Sound behind me. And I'm often asked, how do I create that depth and distance within a landscape? So let's mix up some of that deep mountain color, and I'm going to talk to you now about saturation and how to create that depth within your paintings. When painting atmospheric perspective, it's crucial that we pay attention to our tone and our saturation. It's all about balancing those combinations very carefully. If I get my saturation out, it will start to approach the viewer a little bit too much. And again, this is why I like to work with whatever's furthest away and gradually step up that tone and saturation as those tiers of depth approach the viewer. This is what creates that depth and that distance. So I'm going to start here with that combination that we were talking about right at the start of this video and take a little bit of my titanium white and ultramarine blue. Now already, this combination isn't too bad. It's pretty close to the desired color that we're looking for with those deep mountain shadows. However, it's what I would consider a little one-dimensional. It doesn't have much interest to it. So I'm going to add a touch of burnt umber. Now the burnt umber is going to go into that ultramarine blue, and it's going to start to desaturate, and it's going to approach a nice gray color. I may even have to go back and reintroduce some of that ultramarine blue. But now I want it to appear a little bit more on that blue side than the brown side. So I just keep adjusting that color back and forth until I have the right tone and very close to the right shade. Now we're starting to approach the right color indeed. But we're a little bit far away from that violet color that I'm looking for. So now I'm going to use a little bit of that cobalt teal from that previous mixture we were talking about of the CMYK and a little bit of my quinacridone magenta. Now these two are going to mix together to make a really beautiful violet color. And then when that enters the ultramarine blue, burnt umber, and titanium white combination, that's getting very close to that desired violet-y mountain shadow I'm looking for. Now what about the highlights in those mountains? Have you ever heard the expression, paint what you see, not what you know? I've heard this a lot over my career. And it's something that is vitally important to pay attention to. What do we know about this scenario? Well, I know that those distant mountains are covered with forest. And I do know that those trees are green. However, if I get into any saturated green here, again, it's going to bring that depth too far towards the viewer. So I'm going to want to step that back as much as possible. So I want to give this the appearance of those bright green highlights, but at a distance. So how do we mix that color? I'm going to take a little bit of this titanium white here. And I'm going to add some burnt umber to it. And I'm going to make a very light brown color. And then just add a touch of cobalt teal. Now notice we haven't gotten into any green or any yellow yet. But that nice green tinge to the teal reacts really beautifully with that burnt umber. And that would be the green equivalent that I'd use for some of those deep mountain highlights. Now, if I need to drop the tone slightly, I can add the slightest amount of ultramarine blue. And that is the relationship that I'm looking for right there. It's subtle. That highlight is stepped up just a little bit further than that shadow color. Now, what if we want to move those tiers of depth forward? So here, I'm going to drop the tone again. And I'm going to start to introduce more color. So more ultramarine blue, a little less burnt umber, but I'm still going to add just a touch to desaturate. And of course, just a touch of that titanium white to just lift the tone slightly. And this would be the color that I'd use for some of those mountains as they begin to step up and come closer towards the viewer. Now, again, to make sure that I have some coordination there, I'm going to add the slightest amount of quinacridone magenta, as well as that cobalt teal. So we've taken a step down now in terms of tone. Notice how much darker it is there. So that would mean that these mountains would start to come a little bit further forward. And we only have our color relationships to play with. This is the coolest thing about painting, is I'm just manipulating these color relationships. And that's how we can create three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. Now, let's mix up a little bit of that highlight color. And I'm going to take some more of the titanium white and burnt umber again. We're going to step up the tone a little bit and plenty of that cobalt teal. But how do we increase that saturation? Well, again, I'm going to add a touch more of that ultramarine blue, but now I'm going to introduce a touch of yellow oxide. Now, remember, I did say that this color was a little bit strong. It's nowhere near the cadmium yellow, but it's just enough to start to add some real nice warmth to this highlight color. When I mix it in with the cobalt teal, it starts achieving a bit more of a saturated green. And it's stepping it up enough that it's going to start to come forward. Now, when we compare this to our shadow color, notice how the highlight is a little bit stronger and a little bit lighter. And that shadow is a little bit darker by comparison. In the vast distance, our highlights and shadows are a lot closer to each other tonally. And as we come forward, that relationship gets wider and wider. Our tones are getting brighter, but our shadows are getting darker. This is the way that we achieve that atmospheric perspective. Now, thank you so much for watching this video. I really hope that you found it helpful. I'm going to be throwing in a few more of these technical videos onto my channel, and I really want to make them as useful as possible. So let me know some of those areas that you struggle with by leaving me a comment in that comment section down below. Now, if you want to find out more about this painting of Milford Sound behind me, I've been filming the entire process, and I'm going to be sharing that with you very, very soon. This has been an epic project in the studio, and it has taken over 200 hours so far, and I've got a long way still to go. But I've tried my best to focus on some of those areas where people have been emailing me, asking me for advice on atmospheric perspective and depth, as well as clouds and light. Now, not only is this painting of Milford Sound going to feature in that landscape tutorial, but it's also going to be alongside another recent project, the Kimberley. Again, this was a massive painting, and I did my best to focus on atmospheric perspective and depth, but also linear perspective with all of those massive chunky rocks diminishing into the distance. Now, subscribers through my website are going to be the first to know about this epic landscapes tutorial. So if you aren't subscribed, it's free to do so. Simply go to andrewtishler.com slash subscribe. Now, a big thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. And again, get yourself a free two-month trial by clicking that link in the description down below. I want to just take this opportunity to sincerely thank you, again, for watching this video, but also for subscribing to my channel. I've now reached over 160,000 subscribers, and I never thought that this was possible. I mean, I know there's a lot of other channels out there with thousands and hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but I know me, and this is just awesome and tremendous that you would spend some time with me here and watch these videos. I really sincerely hope they're helpful for you. So again, if you like this video, then please click that like button for me. If you want to come back for more and see more of these painting videos, then make sure you're subscribed and click that notification icon so you're notified when I upload another video. As always, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, but most important, subscribe through my website at andrewtishler.com. Thank you so much for stopping by. I'll see you again soon.