Bright vs dull watercolors. How to mix clean colors, how to mix greys. Warm vs cool. Muddy colors.
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- If you have trouble mixing colors with watercolor paints, then this video is for you. Watercolor mixing formula by Joe Cartwright.
My PATREON MEMBERSHIP PAGE: www.patreon.co... - in addition to ad-free content you get exclusive content (new videos will be more in depth than those on my UA-cam channel), hi-resolution reference photos, photos of my finished painting, and drawing outlines where available. Other benefits are also included.
My teaching manual: Mastering Watercolors - A Practical Guide: amzn.to/3ZF2FRW
The15th video in my beginner watercolor painting series, I give you critical information to help you mix clean, bright colors when you want them. I also cover how to mix various greys and where they are important.
I aim to clear up confusions people often have about warm and cool colors which cause them to produce unexpected results when they try to mix a particular color. This is particularly true when the target is a bright clean color, but the result is dull and lacking vibrancy.
An understanding of the information in this video is very important if you want to predictably mix the color you want quickly.
If you are a beginner, and this is the first of my videos in this series you are watching, then I highly recommend that you go back and begin at Watercolor Class One and do the exercises in each. These exercises are what I used to put my beginner face-to-face students through, before allowing them to progress to more advanced subjects. Even now, before a student, new to watercolor, can join my online class they have to first prove they have studied and applied this beginner lessons. In this way, new students are able to more easily join my more advanced classes.
I also have a couple of watercolor painting books which I published and distribute through Amazon.
The first one, which has sold over 10,000 copies is bascially my teaching manual and is titled:
Mastering Watercolors - A Practical Guide.
The second is full of step by step demonstrations and is titled: Watercolor Step By Step: amzn.to/3z4YXEu
Both books are available in kindle format and paperback.
You can also find a lot of useful information on my website: www.paintingwi...
![All My Blue Colors [Why I Chose Them]](/img/n.gif)
This guy is the absolute king of nuts and bolts watercolor. I've recommended these videos in the past.
Thanks again!
Wow you should have way more views . I like how you teach color mixing. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Thank you so much for what you are doing! I started learning watercolor painting with your videos a month ago. I can see a good progress thanks to the techniques and tips you are sharing. Please continue!
You are so welcome!
That was the clearest demonstration of colour mixing I've ever seen.
Wow, thank you!
At last....now I understand dull and bright color mixing.
Glad it was helpful!
I have struggled for years to make sense of colour theory/mixing.
Thank you Joe for presenting this in such an easy to understand way 👏👏👏
Glad it was helpful! You are very welcome. :-)
I'm a relatively new painter, and this video was recommended to me by a fellow watercolorist. I agree with her: This is the best video/explanation I've seen on color mixing "warm" and "cool" colors. I thoroughly understand now Thank you!
Wow, thank you! Thank you for the feedback. Glad it was helpful to you.
Oh my gosh! Where have you been all my life? I have listen to other artist explain color theory And after a while all I hear is blah blah blah. I really get your explanation! You are a wonderful teacher.
Hello Donna, thank you very much for your feedback. Glad my video was of help - I enjoy teaching watercolour.
I loved the sound of the brush swishing in the water 😀😃😄
Thanks for the feedback.
This has been a great explanation for a fairly new painter- much easier than just the warm vs cool mix scenarios I was trying to get my head around- thank you 😊
You're very welcome!
great video. I ran across your formula for clean secondaries years ago. Love it!!
Awesome! Thank you!
I gotta tell ya', this was the BEST explaination of color theory. I wanted more!!! thanks, Joe Cartwright of the Ponderosa.
Glad it helped! Cheers,
Little Joe 🤣
What a clear and useful explanation! I'm so grateful to find your chanel. 😊
Glad it was helpful!
Important information that beginners need right off the bat. I own way too many colors. Thank you! I’ve been sharing your videos.
Thanks for sharing!!
Joe, you have answered my unsolved mysteries about this medium. Your videos have a lot of very important information for beginners like me. Thank you so much!
You are very welcome
Thans you thuis was really helpful! But how can we know if a primary colour is warm or cold please? As you put it: if there is a little bit of blue,red or yellow in it?
I will give your question some thought and see if I can produce a video that will help some more. However, if you mix two primaries together, and you get a nice pure looking secondary, then you know that those primaries only have the same two colors in them. For example French Ultramarine and Permanent Rose produce a lovely pure looking violete. That tells you that they each must only have a little of each other's color. In this way, you can work out, for your own palette, which colors are warm and cool.
Excellent!! The best video in this subject. I have seen a lot of them! Thanks from my heart!! ❤️❤️
Wow, thank you! I hope you enjoy my other ones. :-)
@@JoeCartwright Sure!! Thank you! I might get your books, too!! It gets here (Brazil) very expensive because of the importation fees! ☺️🙌🏼
Sorry about my English! 😁😁
@@deborahamaral8470 You might do better buying the Kindle ebook version which is cheaper and would be easily viewable on your computer of ipad. 😊😊
@@deborahamaral8470 Your English is very good. Thank you for viewing my videos.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us❤
My pleasure 😊 Glad you found it helpful.
Thank you for the very best explanation for why some primary color combinations are bright, and others are dull. I have been trying to figure out a formula for each secondary color, and just couldnt get it. I was going about it wrong by trying to memorize it instead of understanding why. Kudos. It is really quite obvious once I understood it.
You are so welcome! Glad it was helpful.
Thank you Joe. It’s very helpful to understand the mixing of colours.
Just have to go back to explore by myself.
You are very welcome. Practice and observation are important for successful watercolor paintings.
Warm and cool colors are relative to other colors-UM blue is warm compared to cobalt. Why does this make so much sense! Thanks for clarifying this
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you for your wonderful lesson.
My pleasure!
Excellent. So clear!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you for this color mixing video!
Have a limited pallet but yours finally made sense by showing each color (will have a bit of an other color in it)!
This helps me more than (this color is a warm red, this is a cool red) as if see Cad Yellow (was just an bit oranger to me) using the symbols shows has lil red in it & finally understand A. yellow leans green & green has blue in it!
Sometimes different brands colors aren’t always the same so have lots to learn but enjoying your videos!
You are so welcome! Glad it was helpful!
Very comprehensive and it makes sense now. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Very good explanation about color mixing ..gives a insight about concept of warm and cool colors.Thank you sir for producing video about these basic and very important things related with color mixing.
You are most welcome
Fantastic, thank you 👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
Joe, thanks for the informative video. I like your pallet and the way you've laid it out, very logical. Do you mind posting a link to where I can buy one. Thanks again.
Glad you liked the video. The palette I use is one I designed and made myself using a 3D printer. I sell them for $60 Australian plus postage. Otherwise you can look for something similar with two or three large mixing areas, and divide it yourself with some pieces of plastic and glue.
Fantastic, clear video!
I have one question for you. I have always considered cerulean blue to be a cool blue, but in your explanation you said it has some yellow in it that makes in greenish. Wouldn’t the yellow in it make it a warmer blue then compared to other blues?
Thank you so much.
Glad you enjoyed it. Good question. It is cooler because it appears more green - which is considered a cooler color than other blues that lean towards a red. So if you mix Cerulean with Aureolin, you are mixing just Blues and Yellow, which gives a nice green. However if you were to use French Ultramarine (a warm blue because it has some red) then you would get a duller green as it would have been mixed with Blue, Yellow, plus a little bit of red in the blue.
Thank you for your help .
You're welcome!
Very informative, thanks
Thanks for watching!
so helpful, many thx .. as a beginner i´m now searching to find out how "all" the commercial colors are mixed (i hope the different brands do name it the same)
Glad it was helpful! With practice you will be able to work it out yourself for any color.
Just watched this video today and found it very informative and helpful. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you so much Joe, that has cleared up my thoughts on why mixing some colours I get different results, eg I have been mixing a pure secondary and then a tertiary colours and this video has explained to be why there is that colour variation
Good to hear it helped clear things up Grant.
Great video. I was wondering why sometimes I get mud so now I have to check the compositions of my colors.thanks for producing this vide and sharing it with us.
Glad you enjoyed it David. Thanks for the feedback.
As always, very informative. The clearest explanation of this I've seen. Thanks for this Joe.
Glad it was helpful Steve. Thanks for the feedback.
Thank you Joe . Very much appreciated ( from a self taught amateur watercolour lover)
You are very welcome Sherry. Glad it was of interest to you.
Fantastic! Thank you!!!
You're very welcome! Glad you enjoyed my video!
Very helpful. Thank you for the clear explanation.
Glad it was helpful!
So happy to have found your channel. You are a wonderful teacher. Thank you !! How on earth do you get your palette so clean lol?
You are so welcome! Other than Permanent Rose, I don't have any staining colors in my palette, so it is easy to keep it clean.
Soooo good!! Thank you
You're so welcome!
This is an amazing tutorial for a beginner thank you so much Joe
Glad it was helpful Bev.
Thank you, Joe. Very helpful. Can you please say which are the 15 colors that you have?
Thanks in advance.
Glad it was helpful. Here is a link that lists all of my usual colors. www.paintingwithwatercolors.com/joe-cartwrights-palette-of-watercolors/
Thank you
Thanks Joe - this was a great explanation! I feel like experienced painters can look at any colour and immediately see it's composite colours - can instinctively see if a colour is warm or cool. Is there a trick to this? Or is it just practice?
You're welcome. Thank you for the feedback. Obviously practice is important, however a couple ot tips which might help are to look at the colour you know is warm say French Ultramarine is a warm blue, and compare other blues to it - with a little practice it becomes quite easy to see if a colour is warmer or cooler than another similar colour.
Thank You!
You're welcome!
Very good, teach!
Thanks Rob, I feel it will not be long before you have a brush in your hand again. :-)
I’m learning so much by swatching these colors! I am starting to understand this. Could i say +y and +b make a color “cool” and the +r a warm?
+y and R will be warm too.
The same for Y +r
Is there a way to know what colors make up each paint color?
If you keep to a limited palette of about 12 to 14 colors then you can easily work out what subcolors exist in your pigments, by comparing the results of your mixes. One of my future videos will cover the colors in my palette along with their sub color. In the mean time you could probably just google each color asking what their color bias is.
Thanks Joe! What are the colors on your palette?
You are welcome. You can download my palette colors here: www.patreon.com/collection/10078
Thanks Joe. A great explanation. It’s always good to be reminded of the basics. Wishing you and your family a very Happy Christmas and all the best for the New Year. Let’s hope next year we will return to normalcy. 🦋🙂
Happy holidays! to you too Irma. Yes, I have my fingers crossed for next year too. :-)
Do you have in your palette for reds only the cool permanent rose and the warm scarlet lake? Do you have any video where you share your whole palette? Thx
You are correct about the reds I use. I don't yet have a video where I share my whole palette.
But how does one know if the primaries have a red, blue, or yellow in them?
@@hannastocksick7395 By seeing how they react with one another. French Ultramarine and Permanent Rose produce a nice clean seconday so that tells you the blue has to have some red in it and the red has to have some blue in it. In time one gets much better at just looking and seeing the color bias.
Joe, what brushes do you use?
They are made by an Australian company, called NEEF. The model is 4750-LP in various sizes, my main ones are size 8,12 and 16.
@@JoeCartwright thx Joe. I love your beginners class and style
Thanks!
Thank you verfy much for the donation. Much appreciated.
@@JoeCartwright You're welcome. It's not much and is no reflection of my great appreciation for your content, but I wanted to say thanks some way. I wish you the very best!
@@1TimothyFourTen I appreciate the sentiment,thanks.
So is the winsor blue green shade a cool blue? Like a B + y?
Yes it is. You are quite right.
Joe; Please check my color temperatures below using a W & N six color pallet, please:
French Ultramarine = B + r
Winsor Blue = B + y
Winsor Lemon = Y + b
Winsor Yellow = Y + r
Permanent Rose = R + b
Scarlet Lake = R + y
If you were to add a few earth colors, which ones would you use?
Hi Robert, I assume you are using Winsor Blue (Green shade) not (Red shade), if so all the color leanings are correct. The earth colors I used most of are Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, and Raw Umber. I do also use Burnt Umber at times but not as important (to me) as the other three.
Yup! WB, Green shade. I did have to think about that one for a second, if the "y" applied to that color. Green shade pushes towards yellow when you make green so I assumed that the "y" would be the correct letter. Thanks for the advice on the earth shades. I have all of those and am good to go. Thanks, Joe!
@@RobertHopkinsArt All the best for the feastive season.
I understand the need for only two colours for a pure secondary, but the stumbling block is when I look at a red say, does it have a bit of yellow in it, or a bit of blue in it? Any tips?
In time you get to be able to look at a colour and see whether or not it leans to a second colour (most do). However, I know that is not so easy when you are first beginning. There are a number of tips which may help you. 1. Google the colour and ask what the secondary bias is for a particular colour. Most likely someone will have already posted it. 2. Compare your colour in your palette to the other ones in it - this is why it is best to just have 12 - 14 colours which you know very well, rather than 60, of which you know very little. For instance, French Ultramarine leans to the red, so when you put it next to normal Cobalt Blue (as opposed to Cobalt Blue Deep) you can see that Cobalt Blue does not lean to the red. In fact Cobalt Blue is close to a pure blue. Then you can compare Cobalt Blue to another blue, such as Cerulean Blue, which will show that Cerulean leans a little to the green - which means it has a bit of yellow in it. 3. The third tip is that you can take a colour with a known bias, and by mixing another colour with it you can get an idea of what the bias is of the second mixed colour based on wheather you mix a pure secondary or a dull tertiary colour. Hope that helps.
@@JoeCartwright Thanks so much for your help.
@@iangibbon5771 You are welcome.
Toll erklärt. 👍 Schade, dass es keine deutsche Übersetzung gibt. Bitte mit anderen Farben fortführen.
Glad you enjoyed it. UA-cam does auto translate to most languages on PC. You should try other colours using the information in my video. You will learn a lot from that exercise.
Joe, you have answered my unsolved mysteries about this medium. Your videos have a lot of very important information for beginners like me. Thank you so much!
Glad it was helpful Ambeth!
Thank you!
You are very welcome Gabby.