JWD Publishing Blog

 Greetings Everyone!

First, before thinking about color, if  you are a quilter, I want to share something that excited me this week—-besides snow! A few days ago I clicked onto our JWD homepage  and found a SURPRISE awaiting me—–something I have been wanting for a very long time.  To celebrate my happy-day feeling that’s lasted all week long, JWD is giving  patterns to 5 happy quilters. If your’re interested, go to our homepage to see what I am so excited about—and see why I picked 5 happy quilters. Then let me know what you think of our new feature ……….and if you want one of those patterns, which one? I’ll announce the pattern recipients in the next post.   (By the way, if you are a quilter and want to receive all of JWD’s blogs, do become a fan.) 

Also, one more thing—-I’d love to hear what has made you really happy this week—-big or small.  Thanks for letting me share with you.  Happy smiles to you! 

Now on to color! 

Celebrating Shades

We have been talking about cool color shades these past two weeks. Now it’s time to explore a selection of these shades on your own.  Select  2-3 pure-colors that you really like—pure colors that fall within the cooler section of the color wheel.  So, any color from green to blue to magenta will work. Consider selecting pure colors that do not lie too close to each other on the wheel. For instance, you might choose a green such as aqua green, a blue like cerulean blue, and purple. By spreading out your choices, you’ll see how the shades differ throughout the wheel.

One of the best ways to really understand color, so that it belongs to your creative soul is to play with paints. More specifically, playing means mixing paints to see what happens.  It is an amazingly beneficial activity. It’s well worth the time.

Since most of us have not played with paint since elementary school, you may be reticent about painting, but it’s fun.  In fact, after mixing paints for 15 minutes or so, you’ll feel like an expert. In this exercise, you will mix black paint with a pure color that you have chosen. It’s easy and fun to do. I hope you will take advantage of this activity. You will not regret it. 

If possible, try to do this painting shade scales within the next 2-3 weeks. I know you’ll have fun. Your shade scales will be beautiful. Below are the instructions for obtaining the paints, getting started, painting, and making you pure-color shade scale sample.

PLANING YOUR PAINTING DAY

First Steps

1.  Decide whether you want to paint by yourself or if you want to invite a few friends to have a painting day with you (so much fun!). By working in a small group, you can share color swatches, so each of you have samples of each other’s colors.

2.  Determine your painting day and put it on your calendar. 

3.  Look at the color wheel and determine which 2-3 colors you would like to make shades from. Select 2-3 PURE COLORS that you absolutely love. Choose your pure colors from the range we have been discussing—-something between green and magenta.

4.  Purchase your selected pure color paint from a college book store, an independent art-supply store, a large craft chain store, or an online website. Use Liquitex paint or another brand. Purchase paint in a tube, not a jar. Besides your pure-color paint, also select a strong, clear black paint  (e.g. Mars Black).  Also purchase 2 inexpensive paint brushes and a couple of packages of unlined index cards.

 I have found many paint color names have mysterious names. It can be hard to figure out what color they really are. If purchasing at a store, use your eyes to determine your color—not necessarily the name.  Your selected pure color should be vibrant, rich, and clear. It should not have any graying quality to it; nor should it have any whitening or blackening. When selecting your paints at a store, carefully open the lid to make certain the paint color is a pure color.  (The Liquitex’s tube name for turquoise blue/cyan  is brilliant blue and magenta is medium magenta.) If you purchase online, select paints that appear brilliant and pure.

For your information: Liquitex offers several types of paints. For our purposes, we want to use paints from the professional paints category. The specific choice for us within this category is heavy body acrylic paints or more specifically, heavy body artist acrylic paints. In an earlier post (August 9, 2011) I posted additional information about Liquitex paints that may be helpful, if you are curious about different types of paints or if you are having trouble finding the paints.

PAINTING DAY

Getting Started

1.  Gather together your paints, brushes, index cards, a large sheet of paper to protect your table, a coffee stirrer, paper towels or a cloth, water, paint container, toothpicks, white construction paper or tag board, gluestick, ruler, pencil, scissors or rotary cutter and mat.

2.  To begin, number index cards from 1-20. Paint in a sequential order. Begin painting with card #1.  This first card will be the pure color. The second card will have the first addition of black, etc.  The number of cards used will depend on the pure color you are working with and how large your painting increments are. Number additional cards as needed.

Painting

3.  Select the pure color paint you want to begin painting with. Place 1-2 tablespoons of  this paint in your paint container. Add a few drops of water to the paint, so the paint is of good spreading consistency. Be cautious when adding water, as you do not want the paint to be watery. Paint an index card with the pure color. Clean the paint brush.

4.  With a toothpick, add a small drop of black to the pure color. Blend thoroughly with a stirring utensil. Then paint an index card with this new color. Clean the paint brush.

5.  Continue adding a tiny bit of black to the blended paint, painting an index card after each mixing. You can slightly increase the amount of black added, as your paint gets darker. Continue adding black to your mixed paint and painting an index card after each addition until your blended paint is almost black. Lastly, paint an index card with black. 

6.  As you work, set the painted cards aside to dry. Once dried, gather in order of painting, place in a pile, and put a heavy book on top of the pile.

Making Your Shade Scales

7.  Once cards are flattened, cut a 1/2-inch strip off of the short end of each index card, working from the pure color to black.  Then with glue-stick or some other adhesive, place the colored strips in a straight line on construction paper or tag board, moving from the pure color to black. When gluing the strips onto the paper, overlap them slightly, so there is no background paper showing between the strips. The number of shades in your pure color’s shade scale will depend on how dark or light your pure color is.  If your shades are from a light-valued  pure color,  you’ll have many more shade strips than if your pure color is dark. 

8.  Take a break. Then repeat the process for your other pure-color shade scale(s). 

9.  If you are working with friends, divide your index cards, so that each person has samples of each shade scale. If you are working alone, place the remaining parts of your painted index cards in envelopes. Place these in a safe place to be used for another painting project sometime down the line. Keep your pure color paint tubes, as you may be using them again too.

 See you next week.  Happy Coloring!

Joen

 Text and photography copyright   © Joen Wolfrom

Joen is a color enthusiast who teaches and lectures on color. She has written three color books: Color Play, Visual Coloring, and The Magical Effects of Color. Her Studio Color Wheel is used to illustrate color concepts in many of these blog posts. She is also the designer of the 3-in-1 Color Tool. Her new book Adventures in Designis now available. Joen’s newest design tool, the Magic Design-Ratio Tool has just been released. All books and products are published by C & T Publishing.