Painting in Acrylic 1: Your Color Palette

So, to start with, you should know there are two color wheels in nature, not one. First, there's the additive color wheel of light. We say additive because the more colors you add, the lighter the colors get. When you combine all three primary colors, you get white.

This image still comes from a video from the Discovery Channel:

Characteristics of the Additive Color Wheel

Primary Colors: Red, Green, and Blue.

Secondary Colors: Yellow, Cyan, Magenta

Combine to Make: White

This is how you see the world. Light bounces off of objects and into your eyes. The photoreceptors in your eyes pick up levels of red, green, and blue, and their various combinations. It's worth remembering this, as you learn about the subtractive color wheel, the wheel of pigments. When you paint, and you try to recreate reality, you're not simply copying what you see. You are translating what you see from one color wheel to another, an act that is just as interpretive and personal as translating the 3D world onto a flat surface.

The subtractive color wheel is probably what you're more used to. It looks like this:

Characteristics of the Subtractive Color Wheel

Primary Colors: Red, Green, and Yellow.

Secondary Colors: Green, Orange, Purple

Combine to Make: Black, Gray, Brown, and everything inbetween.

According to this list, all you need are the three primary colors to mix every hue possible. Sounds simple right? Well, unfortunately, it's not that simple, because perfect primary colors don't exist, at least not as pigments available in stores. You may see a tube of paint labeled "primary blue" or "primary yellow", but it isn't really. It's just a silly name. No, in order to get a full range of colors, you'll need a warm and cool variant for each of the primary colors. If you buy that (six tubes), plus a titanium white, then you'll be able to paint practically every color there is. So, you need to learn common pigment names, which tend to vary by brand:

Warm Blues: Ultramarine, Indanthrone

Cool Blues: Pthalocyanine (Green Shade), Prussian

Warm Reds: Cadmium, Napthol, Pyrrol Red & Scarlet

Cool Reds: Quinacridone, Magenta, Carmine, New or Permanent Alizarin Crimson

Warm Yellows: Cadmium, Aureolin, Naples Yellow

Cool Yellows: Lemon Yellow, Yellow Light, Hanza Yellow

These are good primary colors to add to your palette. Buy one from each section, and you'll never need to buy a green, orange, purple, violet, black, or grey. Think of the money you'll save!

A word of warning - if you see the word "hue" added to a color, it means that paint tube doesn't really have that chemical ingredient, but instead has a replacement pigment (or mixture of pigments) that was cheaper to produce. These paints are intended for students who don't want to spend so much. They don't mix the same way, or look as pretty as the more expensive colors. 

In addition, certain colors are more toxic, especially those containing cadmium, so you're now likely to see "Cadmium-Free" alternatives. I have bought these and found them to mix and behave just like the more toxic counterparts, so I feel fine recommending them.

Another important consideration is light-fastness. This is the pigment's resistance to fading, especially under direct sunlight. Certain pigments and paints are more light-fast than others, and it usually has nothing to do with price. Some of the most expensive paints are not light-fast, and some break down over time, regardless of sunlight. These unstable pigments are called fugitive. People buy them because it's what old masters used to use. I daresay most wouldn't have, if they had had modern alternatives, but once a color gets that stamp of approval, people treat it like it's the best way to paint. It's not.

Fugitive color pigments include: alizarin crimson, opera, and anything with the words "madder" or "gamboge" in them.

Ok, so now that we've gone over all that, it's also important to know the elements of color - you have to consider the elements in what you're seeing, in order to mix the right tint, tone, or shade of that color in your painting.

The three elements of color are:

hue

chroma (also called intensity or saturation)

value (also called tone)

You see these elements represented whenever you pick a color in Photoshop:

When you add black to a color, you create darker tones. Manet is thought of as a tonalist painter:

Repose, a Portrait of Berthe Morisot, by Edouard Manet, 1871

When you add white to a color, you create lighter tints. Claude Monet often painted in tints:

Spring on the Epte (The Willow), by Claude Monet, 1885

And, when you add a complimentary color to the color, you get neutral shades. Vermeer painted in shades:

Girl with a Wine Glass, by Johannes Vermeer, 1659

What's a complimentary color? They're just whichever color is opposite another on the subtractive color wheel. Complimentary colors include:

Yellow & Purple

Blue & Orange

Red & Green

It's really a poor name to use, as "complimentary" colors generally look awful next to each other. Some fashion designers have even made a challenge out of it:

Gucci, 2011

What makes Acrylic Paint Special?

Acrylic paint is a water-based medium composed of different pigments in an acrylic polymer emulsion. It doesn't simply dry like watercolor, it cures. This means that, as it dries, it undergoes an irreversible chemical reaction––the paint transforms into a flexible, rubbery plastic that is very strong, sticky, flexible, and resilient. This makes acrylic ideal for painting on many different (non-traditional) surfaces. You can also paint thick layers without it cracking. Even better, if you take your acrylic painting outside, you don’t have to worry about rain ruining it. Once it cures, water can’t reactivate the paint. Whereas, with watercolor, you have to be very careful with your finished work that it never gets wet again. This is why watercolor artwork should be framed behind glass. 

Now, be careful with your work because, although it appears to dry very quickly, within 20 minutes or so, the curing process actually takes days to complete. Which is why, if you accidentally lean your acrylic painting against another surface, you may find it has glued itself to that surface when you pick it up later. This is also why wiping up acrylic paint is fairly easy if it's only a day or two old, but extremely difficult if you leave it a month or longer. So, the sooner you clean up a mess, the better.

Conclusion

So, now that you know all this, you should be ready to paint. Let's go over what you need to consider, when you mix colors:

1. What's the hue of this color?

2. Which primaries should I use to mix this hue? Should I use a warm or cool variety? Are two primaries enough, or does this color require three or more?

3. What's the intensity of this color? Should I lessen it with white? Or with its complimentary?

4. What's the tone of this color? Should I darken it a bit?

Once you can accurately answer these questions, and mix the exact colors you want, you can say you've mastered your palette.