Watching this for the second time now and it just struck me that indeed I have a flower in my garden that has a colour that I can't really describe, when it starts to fade. It's the rose "Edith Holden", named after the Edwardian botanical painter. Have you seen it? At first it's a deep orange with yellow, and then as it fades, it goes somewhere in the direction of the orange you mixed with Nickel Azo Yellow and Quinacridone lilac.
For most of my palettes I've eliminated the secondary colors, the exception being a very limited landscape palette which includes a sap green for convenience and a granulating palette which includes a few violets, for three reasons. The first being many of the prepared secondary hues are simply seldom ever seen in nature, there is always a variation and mixing is required anyway. The second is that using your primaries to mix your secondaries gives cohesion throughout your painting vs adding a new pigment into your mixtures. The third is that many secondary hue pigments have lightfastness issues... less so with green but very much so for orange and violet. If you care about the integrity of your work.. that it can be displayed normally and last as long as you wish it to.. you are much better off investing in good reliable primaries. It takes seconds to mix the secondaries, and you are very often going to get more unique, and more natural, hues in the end. You can certainly use fugitive colors if you plan to digitize your work, however I prefer to ensure all of my materials are of the highest quality so I never have to worry, I can use any of them for any purpose with confidence. Red and yellow are of particular concern so be sure to get reliable information via real life UV tests at both saturation and dilution, or test your own. Too many paints are labelled incorrectly unfortunately.
Hello, thank you for taking the time to write such an elaborate comment. Some artists prefer to work with a limited palette, others like a big palette, both methods work and both have advantages and disdvantages... Before I wrote my first book I had a limited palette. For the book I tested more than 150 paints and I discovered a wonderful world of beautiful colours, which changed my mind. All my paints are single pigment, lightfast, transparent (or semi), cruelty-free, environmentally-friendly, non-toxic and vegan. Even with such strict criteria, I have around 40 pigments in my palette! Incidentally, I didn't find that secondary colours had more lightfasness issues than primary ones. You mention yourself that red and yellow can be of concern... Another reason why I would struggle with a limited palette is that there is more to pigments than hue. For example, French Ultramarine is a great violet bias blue and mixes lovely blue bias purples, but it is granulating so no good for painting smooth, delicate petals. Also, as I like to mix paints straight on the paper wet-in-wet rather than using a palette, I get on better with single pigments than with mixes. With the orange tulip I am currently painting for Patreon, a single orange pigment is the base, with a yellow and a red mixed wet-in-wet on the paper to give hue variations. This works better than if the orange base was already a mix of two primaries. In the end, whatever suits your style, your method and your personality is the right way to go...
I agree about the paints that are usually labelled incorrectly. Plenty of manufacturers claim that their colours are lightfast, some even going as far as claiming that the notoriously fugitive PR83 has good light fastness! I use 16 primary colours as my main palette and add some extra colours when they are needed.
@@AtelierSandrineMaugy A good alternative non granulating colour for F. Ultramarine is Phthalo Blue Red Shade PB15:6. But it is extremely staining. I prefer to grate the ready made Ultramarine Blue or make my own one with raw pigment. And that because the more grated is a pigment the smaller are its particles and so becomes less granulating and more staining. So if you have a muller you can change the properties of a colour while you control how far you want to go.
I use Phthalo Blue Red Shade too (in fact more often than French Ultramarine these days) but it is not quite as violet biased as French Ultramarine so the purple it mixes are not as bright. Unfortunately it's not only the size of the pigment particles that dictates the granulation. Whatever the size of particles, French Ultramarine is a heavy pigment that separates from the others and sinks. When I visited the Daler-Rowney factory as part of the research for my first book, I spent an afternoon in the lab with their chemist. It was so interesting... He showed me several grades of Ultramarine: the more finely ground the more violet they look; the more coarsely ground the greener they are. He also explained that when you grind and mix the pigments at home, unfortunately it won't be as efficient as in the paint factory as the machines are much stronger. He showed the mixing vats: they mix the pigment with the medium for hours on end, through massive rollers and back again. It is beautiful to watch :)
Thank you for the great and very informative video. I'm impressed of the number of yellows and reds ( cool and warm ) that you have in your palette. The most problematic of mixes though are not the oranges but the greens.
@@AtelierSandrineMaugy I know... colours are addictive! lol I have plenty of single pigmented colours too ( not that many as you have of course) but I'm trying to keep my studio palette selection to 16 colours that are mostly primaries. And occasionally I add more according my needs.
Hi Sandy, for yellows I would start with Hansa Yellow Light and Hansa Yellow Deep (That's in Daniel Smith). For green, you can either mix all your greens from yellow/blue/red, or get a ready-made green as a base. If you watch my video about mixing greens ua-cam.com/video/ukjCaCbhNxg/v-deo.html you will find some suggestions in there. As you are on my Patreon as well, you can watch the tutorial about the Bias Colour System. That should be helpful for your colour selections :)
Well, that depends on the tutorial... the busier compositions (like the Sweet Peas) are over 10 pages, the single pear is over 6 pages... Each season has 3 tutorials, one for each level: beginner, intermediate and more experienced.
@@AtelierSandrineMaugy I am not sure that answered my question. The book I recently bought doesn't have enough steps in it for me to follow as I am just beginning to paint. I was hoping your new book had more detail. Thanks for replying.
I am sorry you find my answer disapointing, but I don't know what else I can say... There just isn't a set number of steps for the tutorials: it depends how complicated the composition is, how many layers the subjects take, how many different techniques they require... I thought that as you are a beginner, the fact that some of the projects are targetted specifically at beginners would be helpful... As my new book is published by Search Press it will be more widely distributed than the first one, so I would suggest you have a look at it "in person" in a book shop, then you'll see if you think it's suitable for you :)
This was so helpful, thank you!
You're welcome :)
Watching this for the second time now and it just struck me that indeed I have a flower in my garden that has a colour that I can't really describe, when it starts to fade. It's the rose "Edith Holden", named after the Edwardian botanical painter. Have you seen it? At first it's a deep orange with yellow, and then as it fades, it goes somewhere in the direction of the orange you mixed with Nickel Azo Yellow and Quinacridone lilac.
Hi Sofie! Yes, Edith Holden is exactly the kind of colour I am taking about :)
For most of my palettes I've eliminated the secondary colors, the exception being a very limited landscape palette which includes a sap green for convenience and a granulating palette which includes a few violets, for three reasons. The first being many of the prepared secondary hues are simply seldom ever seen in nature, there is always a variation and mixing is required anyway. The second is that using your primaries to mix your secondaries gives cohesion throughout your painting vs adding a new pigment into your mixtures. The third is that many secondary hue pigments have lightfastness issues... less so with green but very much so for orange and violet. If you care about the integrity of your work.. that it can be displayed normally and last as long as you wish it to.. you are much better off investing in good reliable primaries. It takes seconds to mix the secondaries, and you are very often going to get more unique, and more natural, hues in the end. You can certainly use fugitive colors if you plan to digitize your work, however I prefer to ensure all of my materials are of the highest quality so I never have to worry, I can use any of them for any purpose with confidence. Red and yellow are of particular concern so be sure to get reliable information via real life UV tests at both saturation and dilution, or test your own. Too many paints are labelled incorrectly unfortunately.
Hello, thank you for taking the time to write such an elaborate comment.
Some artists prefer to work with a limited palette, others like a big palette, both methods work and both have advantages and disdvantages...
Before I wrote my first book I had a limited palette. For the book I tested more than 150 paints and I discovered a wonderful world of beautiful colours, which changed my mind. All my paints are single pigment, lightfast, transparent (or semi), cruelty-free, environmentally-friendly, non-toxic and vegan. Even with such strict criteria, I have around 40 pigments in my palette! Incidentally, I didn't find that secondary colours had more lightfasness issues than primary ones. You mention yourself that red and yellow can be of concern...
Another reason why I would struggle with a limited palette is that there is more to pigments than hue. For example, French Ultramarine is a great violet bias blue and mixes lovely blue bias purples, but it is granulating so no good for painting smooth, delicate petals.
Also, as I like to mix paints straight on the paper wet-in-wet rather than using a palette, I get on better with single pigments than with mixes. With the orange tulip I am currently painting for Patreon, a single orange pigment is the base, with a yellow and a red mixed wet-in-wet on the paper to give hue variations. This works better than if the orange base was already a mix of two primaries.
In the end, whatever suits your style, your method and your personality is the right way to go...
I agree about the paints that are usually labelled incorrectly. Plenty of manufacturers claim that their colours are lightfast, some even going as far as claiming that the notoriously fugitive PR83 has good light fastness!
I use 16 primary colours as my main palette and add some extra colours when they are needed.
@@AtelierSandrineMaugy A good alternative non granulating colour for F. Ultramarine is Phthalo Blue Red Shade PB15:6. But it is extremely staining.
I prefer to grate the ready made Ultramarine Blue or make my own one with raw pigment. And that because the more grated is a pigment the smaller are its particles and so becomes less granulating and more staining. So if you have a muller you can change the properties of a colour while you control how far you want to go.
I never trust manufacturers' own ratings :) I go to the ASTM for the official ratings on any pigment.
I use Phthalo Blue Red Shade too (in fact more often than French Ultramarine these days) but it is not quite as violet biased as French Ultramarine so the purple it mixes are not as bright.
Unfortunately it's not only the size of the pigment particles that dictates the granulation. Whatever the size of particles, French Ultramarine is a heavy pigment that separates from the others and sinks. When I visited the Daler-Rowney factory as part of the research for my first book, I spent an afternoon in the lab with their chemist. It was so interesting... He showed me several grades of Ultramarine: the more finely ground the more violet they look; the more coarsely ground the greener they are. He also explained that when you grind and mix the pigments at home, unfortunately it won't be as efficient as in the paint factory as the machines are much stronger. He showed the mixing vats: they mix the pigment with the medium for hours on end, through massive rollers and back again. It is beautiful to watch :)
Thank you for the great and very informative video. I'm impressed of the number of yellows and reds ( cool and warm ) that you have in your palette.
The most problematic of mixes though are not the oranges but the greens.
I like to play with a lot of (single) pigments :)
@@AtelierSandrineMaugy I know... colours are addictive! lol I have plenty of single pigmented colours too ( not that many as you have of course) but I'm trying to keep my studio palette selection to 16 colours that are mostly primaries. And occasionally I add more according my needs.
I’m just starting out with color. So how many colors I should get for yellow and green. Thanks Sandy Brede
Hi Sandy, for yellows I would start with Hansa Yellow Light and Hansa Yellow Deep (That's in Daniel Smith). For green, you can either mix all your greens from yellow/blue/red, or get a ready-made green as a base. If you watch my video about mixing greens ua-cam.com/video/ukjCaCbhNxg/v-deo.html you will find some suggestions in there. As you are on my Patreon as well, you can watch the tutorial about the Bias Colour System. That should be helpful for your colour selections :)
Hi, a question about your new book please. Does it have more instruction for each project (more steps shown) than the first book? Thanks
Well, that depends on the tutorial... the busier compositions (like the Sweet Peas) are over 10 pages, the single pear is over 6 pages... Each season has 3 tutorials, one for each level: beginner, intermediate and more experienced.
@@AtelierSandrineMaugy I am not sure that answered my question. The book I recently bought doesn't have enough steps in it for me to follow as I am just beginning to paint. I was hoping your new book had more detail. Thanks for replying.
I am sorry you find my answer disapointing, but I don't know what else I can say... There just isn't a set number of steps for the tutorials: it depends how complicated the composition is, how many layers the subjects take, how many different techniques they require... I thought that as you are a beginner, the fact that some of the projects are targetted specifically at beginners would be helpful...
As my new book is published by Search Press it will be more widely distributed than the first one, so I would suggest you have a look at it "in person" in a book shop, then you'll see if you think it's suitable for you :)