What Colour is that?

There is not and never will be  an absolute and definitive guide to what colour ‘things’ actually are and how you can go about mixing colour A and colour B to make that colour in your painting. This is because all the formulas for colour in the world are subjective – they are  just the way one person perceives colour .After analysis of what pigments they have available in their palette, they arrive at a reasonable suggestion for representing that particular subject whether it be the sky, grass, the ocean etc. Now most of us agree with the statement the sky is blue, the grass is green, sunflower petals are yellow – but which blue, how many greens, what sort of yellow?

This is where a lot of new painting students become undone, they look at the average watercolour colour chart, or  worse, the tubes in the art shop and become completely confused because  they believe that there must be one ‘right’ colour that squeezed out of the tube will be the answer to these questions. When a painting student makes the leap to understanding that everything we look at is a combination of colours and tones of colours, they still persist in thinking there is a magical, precise formula for reproducing the shade of green in a field, or the colour of the ocean on a warm day. Many arts self help books encourage this delusion .Unfortunately human nature will always look for the ‘easy fix’. It is also human nature to think that there is a ‘trick’ to all skills and if someone will just reveal it to us we will be on our way. The reality is that what we refer to as ‘Colour’ does not really exist – it is an illusion of physics and chemistry. What we perceive as colour is really a refraction of pure white light through cell structures. As light is a quality which constantly shifts and changes through the day, so does the tone of colour. Absence of light reduces all colours to darker tones or to black. Go out at night and look at the hills – what colour are they? Now look at them at dawn, midday and sunset? Are they still the same colour? At what point during the 24hours are they the ‘right’ colour? In watercolour we paint exclusively on a white ground – watercolour paper - and that is our light source. The vibrancy of the coloured washes we lay on the paper then depends on a number of other issues – the quality of the paint and paper, the intensity of the wash, the sureness of the application. At my workshops,  when  a student comes to me and says I  need a colour for grass, or trees or what colour is bark I cannot give them a sure- fire- absolute-never fail- this’ll- do- it set of rules to follow that will produce exactly the colour they need. I can only give them questions that they must ask themselves, and these must be answered by learning to see.

Learning to mix colours is observation and practise. Artists develop their own ‘palette’ precisely because no two people are identical and how we see is filtered through our  personal experience .The colour of landscape in the Southern Hemisphere is different to the Northern. In Australia, the sun is higher and brighter and the light tends to bleach out colours, particularly in the middle of the day. This has the result of deepening shadows. Because of this I use black to lower the tones of many colours in my palette.  Using black- deep greens, deep blues and clear browns result. The use of blues such as Prussian blue or Ultramarine to lower tones works well in the Northern hemisphere where the quality of the light is much softer. Certain atmospheric conditions will also require these sorts of mixes. Once again – you must train yourself to really Look – try to understand what light is doing to the colours in your scene.