A Guide for Artists Who Wish to Explore Colour.

As an artist I only ever use the three primary colours when I paint. These colours are magenta, cyan and yellow. Magenta is a type of red and cyan is a type of blue. The paints I use exactly match the colours of ink you find in a CM-K-Y printer. This type of primary colour is called process. "Windsor and Newton" and "Daler Rowney" both make process primaries, in acrylic paints.

The power of using these "pure" colours is that it gives me an almost mathematical control over my work. While I don’t actually measure out paint, it's far easier to work out what is needed in a paint mix if I start from absolute values. The normal paint colours you can buy are already mixed for you, but knowing exactly where they lay on the colour wheel is difficult. This makes getting an exact opposite to a colour hard and trying to balance a painting complicated.  By using these colours and starting from scratch you get a level of control over the colour that is hard to achieve any other way.

You cannot make process primaries by mixing other colours together. But from with them and white all other colours can be made. The three colours are the pure points on a colour triangle. So If we mix magenta and yellow you have an orange, mix in a little cyan and it darkens to a brown. Mix cyan and yellow and you get a green adding in magenta darkens it. The power of this is that process primaries also have the benefit of keeping a painting vibrant.

Adding black to a colour dulls the colour as well as darkening it. But there is no need to use a real black, as you can darken the hue buy mixing all the paint together, or adding more of an opposite colour(so if you have a purple, add more yellow and it darkens). If all the paints are mixed in exact amounts a black could be made. But since hand mixing is always slightly random you will find that a true black is never made. This is what keeps your painting alive.

Many of us haven’t used these base colours since childhood. But I urge every painter to go and play with it, exploring how it works for themselves. With your adult mind you may well re-learn things you forgot a long time ago and discover things you never knew.

Keep painting and best Regards
Samuel Durkin
www.arts-fine.co.uk