Thursday, October 7, 2010

Overlaid Wash Test

Here’s a chart of watercolor pigment combinations. The purpose of the exercise is to see how colors interact when they’re superimposed, rather than mixed wet. After one color swatch is painted and allowed to dry, a second color is laid over it.

The starting colors, on the diagonal from lower left to upper right, are: Winsor yellow, Winsor red, permanent alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, and Winsor green. Each possible mixture sits at the intersection of a horizontal row and a vertical column.

The arrow, for example, shows a combination of permanent alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue. Farther to the right, the mixture of Winsor green and alizarin crimson makes a beautiful gray whose component colors are still visible.

5 comments:

  1. Wonderful exercise in color overlays which I will play with this weekend!

    Karena
    Art by Karena

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  2. That grey is great - very alive with colour variation.

    Does it make a pronounced difference which one you put down first? Does the top colour kind of take priority so to speak?

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  3. I'm an illustration student at BYU-Idaho taking my first watercolor class. We've been doing exercises to help us learn, but this one would be very interesting to do with all of the pigments on my pallet. I love the dynamic color that comes from overlaying rather than mixing. Thanks for sharing!

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  4. I had never thought to paint in this manner. I am going to try it! As always, thanks!

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