Colour Mixing - Yellow Acanthus

I've painted up an acanthus using the two different yellows.

The lemon yellow is a little bit muddy as well. *sigh*. Just a wee bit. The interim colour isn't as bright as I want it to be. I'll have to have a play with all the orange-yellows I have to find the one that mixes the best with the geranium.

Mixing Colours - Yellows

When I paint, I physically mix the paints on the page. It's just the way it feels natural for me to paint.

However, the colours that are mixed have to be compatible. The mix needs to form a new, inbetween colour - as opposed to 'mud'.

"Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green" by Michael Wilcox is a great book about how not to make 'mud'.

This is the colour bias wheel he uses :-


And I've been doing something wrong.

I've been using cadmium yellow to mix with both my red (geranium) and green (chrome green).

It's a green-yellow, so it mixes nicely with the chrome green, but produces a yukky colour when mixed with the red. I needed another yellow that was biased towards the orange/red side of the wheel to mix with the red, rather than the green-yellow (cadmium yellow) that I've been using.

I was lifting the mix (mud) from the page on the red bits, realizing that I needed this other yellow. I got around to looking at this this morning.

I've added in an orange-yellow, which mixes nicely with the red (geranium) to produce a good orange/interim colour, rather than the mud I was getting.
Of course, when this orange-yellow is mixed with the green, it produces mud.

The orange-yellow I've used is Lemon Yellow.
The green-yellow I've used is Cadmium Yellow.

I've mixed each of the yellow with the red, and with the green to record the differences.

The way it looks on the screen, the colour mix of both the cadmium yellow and the lemon yellow with the chrome green look kind of muddy - but in real life, the cadmium yellow mixes nicely, and the lemon yellow produces mud.

The issue is illustrated more clearly with the mixes with the red.

The other mixes I do (with blue - ultramarine, and pink - azilirin tint) aren't a problem, coz they are with white.

In the Forest - Painting

Last time I wrote, which was awhile ago, I'd done the writing for real, and just ruled the lines in the text block. Since then, I've had my head down, painting.

Ruling the lines for the text block is scary. There are the left and right margins, and the ascender/descender lines that are to be ruled in pen. The waistlines just get rubbed out, and the text ends up looking like it's floating.

Not something you want to make a mistake with. A crooked line takes a lot of gentle correction with a scalpel, rubber and burnisher. Or ruling the wrong line in ink. Thankfully, I didn't.

I used a Uniball pen. I want to learn to use a ruling pen one day.

Then gilding.
After giving up on what on earth the amber crystals I had - that I thought were gum ammoniac - were, I went for Will's Quills gilding mix. It's a PVA based mix.
I used transfer gold with it.
I found the edges were very ragged, and found a note in Elyse Boucher's website notes that this did happen with transfer gold. I neatened/pushed them back with a pencil point burnisher.

The raggedness can be seen in the photos - I haven't done any neatening around the illuminated letter at the top left, for example.

I also realized the importance of keeping the writing within that final right hand side margin. I've crossed it a little twice - and had to leave a little white space in the gilding of the border so I didn't cover the letters. ooops. I'd loose marks for that if it were being marked!

I did the gilding in sections - laying down some base, letting it dry, another coat, then gilding it, whilst other sections had a coat or two, or were drying. I haven't neatened and burnished all of it yet.

Then onto the painting. (yay!)

blue - light ultramarine blue
dark blue - ultramarine blue

red - light cadmium
dark red - carnation (transparent, a stainer, but a good colour)

green - my pigment of chrome green (haven't found a tube gouache to match - it's the perfect colour green for this as far as I'm concerned)
dark green - brunswick green

orange - flame orange
yellow - cadmium yellow

pink - tint of azilirin red
dark pink - tine of azilirin red

outlining - indigo

white for mixing - opaque white. I need to visit the art shop and get the right mixing white, but this one seems to work ok. I don't have any zinc white.

Sally very kindly took some photos for me.
I was working on the pink acanthus twist "barber's pole" (I call them that) at the top at the time.




I outlined the elements of this roundel using the uniball pen, and the line was far too thick. I had to repaint the edges to thin the line (insert swear words here).
I've outlined the rest in indigo goauche - much better, tho I should probably be using prussian blue, which is a bit darker.

I describe how I paint - physical mixing the colours on the paper, in
http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/2006/10/that-paper-on-how-i-do-my-highlighting.html
- "The Soft Method of Blending".

Boy, do I need to clean that paper up! But the description of how I paint is all correct.

So the pink acanthus in the box right next to the roundel is outlined in the indigo paint, for comparison to the pen outlining.

The piece is 40 cm by 50 cm.