Recipes vs. Chromatic Mixing

It's always nice to learn (or re-learn) a lesson. Today the lesson was about color mixing.

There's all sorts of different levels of color mixing, but broadly they span the gamut from pre-mixing all your colors in advance (not generally a fan) to hardly mixing colors at all, and using 30 different tubes of paint (also generally not a fan). The range between those two is generally where I like to play.

When I first started painting, I worked through a whole lot of color recipes - a bit closer to the pre-mixing end of the spectrum. The color charts can be used for color mixing, but I like to think that doing them can help you discover the possibilities of a range of colors - make you more familiar with what your colors can do, so that you can play a little looser with color in the moment. Like muscle memory for color.

They've helped me work in what's often called "chromatic mixing". Starting with the general color, and adding a bit more red, blue or yellow to push the color in a more accurate direction. This is my particular speed.

So after quite a bit of explanation, my realization today was that I still often use the "color recipe" strategy in my greens. And then I'm miserable while working on the painting. So today I sorta caught myself as I started painting, and intentionally worked in a "chromatic mixing" sort of way. It was so much easier - and far more fun - to paint that way.

Hopefully I remember to work that way next time.

-ZR