Sylvia‘s Art Journey

 I haven’t been here for a while - or so I thought. I wasn’t aware that it was that long. Anyway, I still draw and paint. Still filling sketchbooks. Not much has changed in the meantime. I have started buying watercolours in tubes, but then fill them in pans, gradually changing my colour palette a bit.  My command of watercolour has certainly improved. Learning by doing is essential.  I will see if I find something to write here again every now and then. 

I‘ve been thinking more about cool and warm blues.  Let’s take the colour wheel and put that pure blue at the bottom, just for practical reasons. This pure blue is the coolest of the cool, super cool. On the opposite side we habe orange, this should then be the warmest. On the top left and top right we have pure red and pure yellow. They are warm, I would say equally warm, judging from their distance from the orange. No one doubts that if you put even a little bit of blue into that pure red or that pure yellow you cool them down. If you put some yellow into the red or vice versa, you make them warmer. So you can always say if, for example, a red is warm relative to pure red or cool relative to pure red. This is easy.  But for the blue it means that if you put a little red or a little yellow in it you make the blue warmer, because both red and yellow are warm colours. So relative to pure blue all other blues are warm blues. So you can only say if one blue is cooler or warmer than the ot

There is a problem with using the terms cool colours and warm colours when explaining colour mixing. Some people consider a blue that leans towards red a warm blue and a blue that leans towards green a cool blue. I am not sure why they do so, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Blue is considered a cool colour. If you mix in a warm colour like red, it gets warmer. If you mix in another cool colour like green it doesn’t get warmer, but stays cool. The good thing is that these labels aren’t important when deciding what colours to mix to get a certain effect. You just have to have a look at the colour wheel. Mixing colours that are far away from each other results in dull, muddy colours. Mixing colours that are close together results in brilliant colours. Both effects can be just what you want. Some people mix their browns and greys by mixing complementary colours.

 If you want to start painting, you had better have some knowledge of colour theory, at least some basic one. Well, you could buy lots of different colours and use them as they are, but that would be very expensive and not practical.  With just the basics you can already tweak your standard colours a bit. Want your red more orangey? Mix it with a little yellow. Want to make violet from your blue? Mix the blue with a little bit of red. And there is nothing wrong with already having a green and an orange and maybe also a violet in your palette. And some browns. With this you already have quite some options.  The next step would be to understand that there are warm and cool versions of basic colours. A warm red leans towards orange, a cool one towards violet. A warm blue leans towards violet, a cool one towards green. A warm yellow leans towards orange, a cool one towards green. If you want to, say, mix a good, brillant violet, mix a warm blue and a cool red. They both already lean toward

  So long ... ... and thanks to those who really liked my posts. I have found that for a small creator like me posting my work on #Instagram is pointless. If not even the relatively few followers I have regularly see my posts, then what am I doing here? My life and my creative practice don’t depend on me sharing my work. It would be nice if some people found pleasure in looking at my modest drawings and paintings and maybe even got a bit of inspiration from them. But if not, so be it. As long as I find joy in drawing and painting, everything is fine. I am going back to what I originally created this account for, following people whose art I like. Yours, Sylvia

Yesterday I bought a set of watercolours, a box with 12 half pans that can hold 12 more. They are great if you want something more transparent rather than the opaque gouache. So now I have quite some options with which to fill my sketchbooks. I can choose one or the other or combine them. Or combine the watercolours with coloured pencils.  I also bought a watercolour sketchbook that I will use when my mixed media sketchbook is finished.  All I need now is lots of ideas what to paint. 

I have bought some Schmincke Designers Gouache and some Hahnemühle watercolour paper. I need to start practising with the good stuff, because my older niece has asked me to paint something for her 16th birthday in October. So I have done this little painting in my mixed media sketchbook today. The paint is great, so much smoother and easier to handle than the cheap stuff I have used so far. After getting to know it better and practising a bit I will also test the new paper. I‘m looking forward to more painting adventures.