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Observation tells me that the more experienced the abstract artist, the more exquisite their color control.
As a young artist in New York City, I thought of myself as a colorist. Then I was hired as a textile colorist in the garment district. My eyes were opened!
The tonal subtleties that my experienced coworkers were able to mix, match, and harmonize were, at first, beyond my capacity to perceive. It took weeks to train my eye to see what they saw, and months to get efficient at mixing. But then something clicked. My eye became a machine that could analyze the quickest way to mix any color.
The skill has stood me in good stead as an artist. So, to help students, I distilled the most crucial principles and the most useful color mixtures for abstract painters to experience and understand.
Would you like to see? In preparation for The Inspired Abstract next week, I made a video (see below).
Here is one key point. How do we tone down a tube color just a bit? Making mixtures is relatively easy. What often eludes artists is how to slightly reduce the intensity of the tube color. Some artists reach for black, white, or gray.
Instead, go across the color wheel and take just a tiny tip-of-the-brush of the opposite color. Mix it in and watch your playful color transform into its elegant twin.
This miracle at your beck and call is one of the many joys of understanding color.
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