Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Color Charts Are Important

Creating color charts using the paints you have in your palette is such an important tool to learn your colors.

Creating a chart with a simple square of color with the name written below is a great way to keep track of all your colors.  Make a little code or key of the various brands along with names of the colors.

Your own color chart is a great reference tool.  Sure you can find them in many books, but having a chart of what is actually in your own palette is extremely important.

Take it a step further and create color mixing charts, check out this old Tuesday Tip:
http://ritasquier.blogspot.com/2009/02/tuesdays-tips-techniques-for-watercolor_24.html

See more color charts on my blog:
http://ritasquier.blogspot.com/search?q=color+chart

You can see the variety of colors you have at a glance.

Enamel Chart

My Painting With Fire Chart

I have a variety of watercolor painting color charts and encourage my students to create them as homework projects. So I decided to make a similar chart for my beads.

I created myself a nifty little chart of colors to use as a guide when I create torch fired beads. I still need three more washers to finish this chart.

The color combinations are almost endless. I'm starting to wonder what various layers of transparent colors can create.

The colors remind me a lot of watercolors. The quill is neither transparent or opaque. It kinda falls under the semi-transparent, semi-opaque or more so the sedimentary category.

Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Opaque Test Your Colors
You have your colors squeezed out into your palette and you've tossed away the tubes. Now you need to know which watercolors are opaque and which colors are transparent. Remember mixing opaques with too many colors ends up in mud. What do you do?

Create an Opaque Test Chart

• Using waterproof black India Ink, paint a straight line about a 1/4 inch wide onto a piece of watercolor paper. If you have a lot of colors or several palettes, paint several lines. Allow to dry completely.

• Swash each color from your palette across the black line.

• Allow to dry.

• Label each color for future reference.

If the color covers the black line, it is an opaque color.

If the black line shows through, it is a transparent color.

Make sure you have a good mix of paint to water. If you have more water than paint you will end up with a confusing test result like my gamboge and cadmium green in the lower right side of the picture. I created my charts on 300 lb. watercolor paper and then used a three hole punch on one side of the chart and keep them stored in a three ring binder with other test charts. Label the charts with the colors and brands of paint is also very helpful.