Home assignment:

CMY vs RYB Color Mixing

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Instructions

Week 6:

Once you've completed your painting with the CMY palette, compare your painting done with CMY to the painting done with RYB. Are they more similar to each other, or different?

It's interesting to note that they're not so different from one another, even though the primaries are so different.

There is no single "best" palette; you choose your primaries based on the feeling, harmony, mood. Your choice can be based on the colors you have in your reference. After this course, you now know what that means.

Week 5:

Complete your painting with the RYB palette if you haven't already.

Remember to:

  • Look at your photo reference
  • Notice the tonal values of each area
  • Squint
  • Examine your piece from a distance
  • Take progress photos
Week 4:

Complete your 3 color harmony studies from class:

  1. Dramatic / sophisticated
  2. Somber
  3. Exaggerated / excited
Week 3:

When I was talking about guitars and pianos, this is what I was trying to say: Mixing with pre-made colors are easier to start and hard to master, versus mixing with primaries is harder to start but easier to master.

It's easier to harmonize colors when you have less pigments (limited palette) than if you have more pigments to work with (expanded palette).

Complete your 3 studies from class.

  1. The first study was inspired by Veronese; harmonizing colors through tonal values
  2. The second study was inspired by Morandi; harmonizing colors through a unifying color (grey)
  3. The third study was inspired by Bonnard; harmonizing colors with complementarys.
  4. The fourth study will be harmonized by you. I recommend to give yourself about 24 hours after finishing the previous 3 studies before making your own study. This way, you won't be too influenced by a specific artist and their approach.

Other ways to harmonize colors:

  • Don't wash your brush, allow every color to influence all future mixtures.
  • Tone your canvas (imprimatura)
  • Glaze / scumble
Week 2:

Finish your color matching charts with your two sets of primary colors. Report to me what colors you were unable to match, no matter how hard you tried. We'll discuss it next week.

Here are three takeaways that you need to know:

  1. The colors I included in the color matching sheets will be purer if you buy them as pigments in the tube.
  2. There are some colors that you will not be able to mix exactly simply because of the pigment limitations.
  3. No matter what you do with RYB, you will not be able to get magenta, turquoise (Bright Aqua Green) or viridian HOWEVER you can get pretty close to turquoise, magenta, and viridian with RYB.

If you want feedback on your color matching, send me a high quality photo of your color matching sheets taken in neutral light (best time is early or late afternoon in indirect sunlight) and the pigment names of the paints you used.

Week 1:

Finish your color charts if you haven't already. Purchase the correct pigments before next week's session - we'll need every color that's listed!

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