Now the Work Begins

If you want to, dare I use the word, 'master' a medium then last weekend's quick throwing together of a couple of paintings may be a fun start but it's no route to mastery.

So on Sunday night I sat at the computer and ordered some new paint and a few brushes.

Having only old paint is no reason to delay getting the skills together to command the medium as I want to.

In watercolor, a wash can, with a bit of skill, be mixed in seconds to show variation in both color strength (more properly called chroma) and tone (light - dark).

The tonal variation comes almost for free, in that, adding water makes the paint weaker which makes the white of the paper show through. In Acrylic (when used as here, like oil paint) things do not work like that. To go lighter you need to add white and to go darker you need to add black or something else that will do the job. For example a touch of green mixed into red will make it jump towards black.

So what you saw in the opening picture (repeated below) is my effort at trying to duplicate the Munsell colour 'PB'.

This is no place to go into the craziness of the Munsell color names those who want to study it should read. The New Munsell Student Colour Set.

The main point of the "book" is the sets of real painted coloured oblongs that you have to put in order. This teaches you about the variation of both tone and chroma (strength) for each given colour (hue). Here is the completed page for the Munsell colour 'PB' which I tried to partly duplicate in paint. (Yes - I know that there is red in my darks which should not be there - Oh the penetrating power of the camera flash).

I am not giving anything away by showing you this completed page because of COURSE the colors in my photo are not correct that is why you have to buy the book to see the REAL painted colour oblongs to get the benefit of the excercise.

The point is that I should be able to reporduce (make) a given colour almost without thought, as I can now in watercolor. So one day it will be see desired colour reach for ... Cobalt blue plus 'this much' white ... mix ... and ... volia.

We live in hope.