Tips on Oil Painting - Know Your Paints

In this discussion we assume that you use a basic 6-color. The 6-color palette could consist of the following colors:

      1. Lemon Yellow
      2. Cadmium Yellow
      3. Cadmium Red
      4. Permanent Rose (Alizarin Crimson)
      5. French Ultramarine Blue
      6. Phthalo Blue
      7. Titanium White
      8. Ivory Black

You could use a no. 10 filbert.
   
As a beginning artist, the first exercise to try is to color eight 2" x 2" squares with each of the above tube colors and study the result. Try to memorize how these colors look. Use a cheap canvas or a sheet of thick drawing paper.

Lemmon Yellow is, of course, yellow, but can you also see the green undertone or bias? Stare at it for a while and see if you can discern the underlying green. Do the same for:

        - Cadmium Yellow (orange bias)
        - Cadmium Red (orange bias)
        - Permanent Rose (violet bias)
        - French Ultramarine Blue (violet bias)
        - Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) (green bias)

Memorize and visualize the bias of the six colors on your palette.

Next, you can color 2" x 2" squares with mixtures. Start with Lemon Yellow and Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) which both have a green bias. You should get a clean green. Then:

* Mix French Ultramarine Blue and Permanent Rose (both have a violet bias) which yields a clean violet.
* Mix Cadmium red with Cadmium Yellow (both have a violet bias) which yields a clean orange.

Again make an effort to remember the colors of these new mixtures.

Now you can cross mix your tube colors two at a time. For example, mix Lemon Yellow with French Ultramarine Blue. This should give you a green but because Lemon Yellow has a green bias while French Ultramarine Blue has a violet bias it will be different from the one you got before. Compare the two greens and try to remember the difference. Then:

* Mix Cadmium Yellow with Phthalo Blue (Red Shade)
* Mix Cadmium Yellow with French Ultramarine Blue

This will give you all together 4 different greens. Look at them and judge them regarding hue, value, and intensity.

You can do the same with the two blues and the two reds which will you give four different violets. Finally, repeat the process with the two yellows and the two reds which will give you four different oranges.

Next, use different amounts of Titanium White to create tints of, say, French Ultramarine Blue. Mixtures of a tube color with white are called tints. Study a number of French Ultramarine Blue tints to see how Titanium White lightens the mixture and if the tints become chalky or not.

You can also mix each of the six tube colors with black. These mixtures are called shades. And finally, you can mix any tube color with any other tube color or with blank and white (i.e., with varying degrees of grays) to get what are called tones.

What is important here is to create a habit of observing and remembering the mixtures you produce. By now, you can probably guess the potential diversity of color a 6-color palette can produce. We haven’t even added the tertiary colors, i.e., the mixtures of three colors.

Make sure you save your painted squares and that you duly record the colors involved as well as the approximate amounts of each of the colors that make up the mixture. In other words, save your color charts and study them at regular intervals.

The ultimate objective is to accumulate enough active knowledge about mixtures that you can reproduce just about any color without having to think too much. 
At that point all your attention can be directed towards artistic expression. Although it is a rather tedious job, it is nevertheless a necessary one. So do a little bit of it every day.

About the Author

Remi Engels, Ph.D., is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter. He is also the author of a popular Pencil Portrait Drawing Course. Get Your Free copy here: Remi's Pencil Portrait Drawing Course while supplies last.

Details of top 10 Painting Styles information

Abstract Abstract styles of painting do not show only things that were recognizable and in the paintings they don’t try to show people, animals, or places exactly as they appeared in the real world. This style mainly uses color and shape in their paintings to show emotions. Some Abstract art is also called Non-objective art in such art; you do not see specific objects.

Cubism Cubism is modern art made up mostly of paintings, which are not supposed to look real. This style artist uses geometric shapes to show what he is trying to paint early cubists used mainly gray, brown, green, and yellow colors. After 1914, Cubists started to use brighter colors too this was the beginning of the Abstract and Non-objective art styles.

Expressionism In Expressionist Art, the artist tries to express certain feelings about some emotion. This style artists painting were more concerned with having their paintings express a feeling than in making the painting look exactly like what they were painting.

Fauvism Fauvism was an art style that lasted only four years, beginning in 1905and the leader of this movement was Henri Matisse. The word Fauvism is French term for "wild beasts". It got this name because the paintings had bright and unusual colors in this style. The subjects in the paintings were shown in an easy way, and the colors and patterns were bright and wild. I

mpressionism Impressionism style was developed in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These styles of art were painted as if someone just took a quick look at the subject of the painting. The paintings were usually in bold colors and do not have a lot of detail. The paintings in this style were usually outdoor scenes like landscapes and the pictures were painted to look like they were shimmering.

Pointillism In Pointillism, the artist uses small dots or strokes of paint to make the pictures. From distant these dots blend together to form the picture and give the impression of different colors as they blend together.

Pop art Pop art can be any every day item that is drawn in a brash and colorful way and it is short for Popular Art. It is motivated by comic strips, advertising, and popular entertainment.

Postimpressionism Postimpressionism began in the 19th century; it was mainly still lives and landscapes. The postimpressionists artist used lots of colors and shadows.

Primitivism Primitive Art seems to be like an art that is done by a child. The pictures are painted in a very simple, and the subjects are "flat", or two-dimensional. Realism Realism is a type of art style that shows the things exactly as they appear in life. It began in the 18th century, but the most Realist era was in the mid-19th century. Most Realists paintings were from France, but there were some famous American painters who were Realists also.

Surrealism Surrealist’s paintings were generally based on dreams and the paintings were filled with familiar objects which were painted to look strange or mysterious. They hoped their odd paintings will make people look at things in a different way and change the way they felt about things. These artists thought that their paintings might stir up feelings in the back of people mind.

About the Author

Nisha is an Expert author for oil painting reproductions and watercolor paintings. She has written many articles like photo to oil painting. For more information visit: 1startclub.com contact her at malar.article@gmail.com