Everyone who wants to work in a color medium (whether paint, pastel, colored pencils, fabric...) would be well advised to learn a black-and-white art or craft (charcoal, graphite, black-and-white photography...) first. That was how I learned the value of contrast. I think if you jump straight into a color medium, you tend to simply gravitate towards your favorite colors and shy away from the ones you don't care for. You may find that adding a touch of a color you may not love can really give it life.
My color charts took a long time to do but they are saving me a TON of time while painting and avoiding the accidental colors I sometimes create during painting time!
Thanks Michele. Greens turning to mud were my nemesis for just about 6 months, also took me that long maybe a little longer to grasp the color wheel. I felt so stupid. I went to a split primary pallet and finally got it the greens. Then added back a few convenience colors and earth tones. Payne's grey and yellow make the most gorgeous olive green. I'm happy that I can now mix colors but do still keep a scrap of paper to the side to test on. I leave my pallet dirty if I know I'm going to use the same colors in my next subject. If I change subjects I'll clean the pallet. I've made swatches for my paints, and color charts. But I find in my case I remember more from actual use. I will mix and make notes on a thumbnail sketch. I have no formal training so its learn as I go from you generous RU-vid artists. Thanks again. 😁👍
I'm so glad you mentioned lack of contrast. I keep having this argument with acrylic pourers that just because you have some unsaturated colour it doesn't mean it's muddy.
Very helpful list. I find that forcing myself to a limited palette of say 4 colors helps a lot. It’s taken me a while to discipline myself to the technique. Also, the video you did on cool and warm color mixing was very eye opening when it comes to clearer colors. Thanks again!
What a wonderful comparison of not understanding math or color mixing. My husband watches me create so many swatches but NOT the mixed swatches. I even write down the names for each color. Thank you so much. Your simply delightful and I love watercoloring so much, I refuse to give up. ~*Shana
In the Studio with Michele Webber: I loved Algebra in college, but was hopeless with Geometry; which probably doesn't bode well for my drawing skills improvement! 😄
As usual so helpful! I am so sick and tired of ending up with muddy, dirty looking paintings. So will take your advise and spend more time making charts of my colour and how they mix with other colours. I love your lessons.
Thank you. This information is invaluable. Quite sometime ago I saw someone’s video (sorry, can’t remember the name) that suggested charting out 2 blues (a red shade and a green shade) and Payne’s Gray mixed with a warm and cool shade of brown, red and yellow. I also used one that looked orange to me. Each was mixed with varying degrees of color added to the blue-at least 8 mixes for each combination. The results were a shocking variety of colors. With your advice I am going to chart out all the rest of my paints as well! I am also going to watch your video on mixing colors and the one on greens. I am still stuck in isolation because of being immunocompromised so I rely heavily on your tutorials for instruction and am very, very grateful for your generosity and hard work.
Very informative - as you always are. Great to have a review of all the different causes, to reflect on which ones might be troubling us. Water, I'm looking at you...
Definitely a great video of some things that I would have never thought of that caused paintings to be muddy, too much of one color & paint granulation. I am definitely enjoying your videos & expertise on watercolor painting. Thanks for sharing this with us.
Like your bluey sand coloured beach scene so pretty! This week have mixed disastrous muddy colours! Thanks for explaining & helping my future practices.
Few weeks ago I got some violet form Winsor and Newton and when I did a swatch I tought that there is something wrong with the pan, it was granulating like crazy but I didn't know how does granulation look like, just few weeks later I learned a bit more about granulation :)
@@IntheStudiowithMicheleWebber Is there a list of all the granulating colours Michele, or is it a case of going through my whole palette and making swatches? I will definitely make the colour charts you have recommended, I just wondered if there was a definitive list of the granulating pigments. Many thanks for your help.
Ooh yeah, there are a lot of myths about what causes muddy colors! Colour theory makes a huge difference - I still often struggle with blues, if they're not very significantly cool or warm I can have trouble determining their "temperature". My fix? I mix them with colors I DO know! If I grab a very cool red, I can mix it with my trouble blues and see what those mixes look like. Makes it much easier on me when I've been staring at the same swatches thinking "I know they're different, I can see that they're different, but I cannot figure out which is cooler vs warmer". Mix it and see what the purples and greens look like! I saw someone, I'm pretty sure it was Denise of In Liquid Color, with a palette with dedicated mixing areas for different groups of colours - neutrals in one well, greens in another, purples in a third etc. That way you won't accidentally get green in your purple mixes! I love that method, it works particularly well in my Kuretake 14 pan travel palette - it's got nine mixing wells, so I can split everything up and keep my colors from contaminating each other. Re: paint quality: the super cheap, chalk filled paints really do get in your way more than anything. But there are really great affordable paints, too, like the MeiLiang/Pretty Excellent set - I got mine for £19 on Amazon, but I've seen it as low as £14! No pigment information, and it can be a bit confusing to have so many colors on your palette at once, but the paints are good and transparent, they mix really well... They're just incredibly good value for your money. The paints all have the "normal" names, too, so it's easy to follow along with tutorials. I know a lot of cheaper sets with have their own names for colours, but "brown" and "pink" aren't really helpful names. ...and also the tin is turquoise with a parrot on it and honestly the set would be worth it just for that 😁
I do love a pretty tin! Well the problem with blue is it sits between yellow and red in the primaries (both warm colours), so a green based blue could be described as a warm blue, but so could a red based blue. And because all blues are generally 'cool' it's just tiny graduations of some being warmer than others. Very confusing!
@@IntheStudiowithMicheleWebber Yeah, blues continue to give me grief 😅 it's easier now that I've stopped trying to figure out what they're "supposed" to be and just see how they behave in practice. I don't need to be able to place everything perfectly on the colour spectrum, I just need to know how to get the colours I want 😅
So thankful to you for making this video. I’m so glad I am aware of these muddy color issues before I get into any potentially bad habits as a beginner.😊💕👍
As you stated, I think its good advice to start out with student grade and replace with professional as you run out of a color. Also I like the blue and yellow color chart idea. I have done color charts, but not exclusive to green. I am going to give that idea a go.
This has always been a big confusion for me. Some artist's say never use tube earth colors and other list them in their colors they like to use. I do love the tube earth colors and use Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber quite a bit but I don't go crazy mixing them into other colors. I guess I'm lazy because I like the convenience of a tube of Burnt Sienna and don't want to have to mix it each time especially if I need a lot of it. I was happy to see you didn't think buying earth colors was a bad thing and are quite beautiful if used in the right places. Your video helped me a lot in understanding what makes colors mucky. Also how do you know what colors are transparent or semi opaque does it say on the tube? Your videos are great and I'm getting a lot out of them, thanks again.
Sometimes manufacturers list transparency on the tube or their website. The easiest thing is to make a chart. If you draw a permanent ink thick black line and then swatch your paint over the top you will see how clearly the line is retained and how transparent the paint is.
I learned to use 3 jars of water. One for warm colors one for cool and one for clean fresh water. Ì also keep a small spray bottle of water for wetting my paint.
Thank you! Very interesting!! Do you have a video about granulating colors? I love them! I am a relative newbie and I think that getting to know more about my colors is great advice!💕
I loved this video as a horticulturist I see so many variations of greens browns etc, since I've only used regular color pencils I'm used to having multi different colors but going to watercolor pencils which are expensive I decided to grab some watercolor blocks( hope I'm saying that right I've git darker colors and brighter colors 16,in each student kind I'm hoping this will be sufficient as it will drive me bonkers if I cant get right shade as a horticulturist..lol thank you for making the videos...mikelle newyork strong ✍🎨😷👍
I can't thank you enough for your excellent tutorials Michele! I have learnt SO MUCH from you! And I am still learning (got a long way to go!). I hope to subscribe to your Patreon channel eventually, but for now I am enjoying learning from these tutorials. Thank you so much!
This has been helpful for a novice like me. Thank you! I had stopped using cad yellow, red and cerulean as they always looked chalky mixed with a more transparent colour. The comparision of stained glass and brick wall was interesting. Would you consider doing a video on mixing greens and another one on opaques vs granulated vs transparent please.
Very helpful video Michele! When you were discussing greens, I was reminded of your hilarious description on another video; something along the lines of "weird space alien green." It gave me another much-needed laugh! 🤣😂👍 Donna
I’m going to invest in a new palette after watching this, mine are square and horribly difficult to get really clean. I like the one you have with the lovely big mixing wells, can you tell me the make please? Thank you for sharing as always great information thank you 😊
Actually Michele, I can’t tell if my colours are opaque or transparent. The only way I can increase transparency is by adding more water. And I always change my water from time to time so that all my colours don’t become mud.
There's an easy way to tell. Draw a thick black line in waterproof ink on a piece of paper. Paint little swatches of your paints across the top, the black line will be clearer and easier to see throught the more transparent colours :-)
No subtitles - thats one third of us stuffed, then! (Yes, one in three of the population suffer from some degree of hearing loss throughout their lives). Thanks for the effort you make with your wonderul talents, keeps us all going in these uncertain times. Take care, you and yours, cadw saf, Den Cymru. X
Hi Denis, subtitles are enabled for this video, although they are automatic (I don't have the hours needed to go through every line of dialog). My hearing isn't as good as it once was either! Have a look at your settings, you may have turned them off accidentally. You stay safe too :-)
@@IntheStudiowithMicheleWebber Thanks, Michele. Turned it on now jest, and its working perfectly - go figure, as the cousins say ! Am starting to tidy my art stuff, not a huge job, more 'makework' really. Take care, Den
I had to laugh because in this video you really hit the “great” internet advices on how to do and not do things. Especially those one-pigment colours and mixing/not mixing together. I’m bumping into it quite often and while I’ve got an impression that beginners must be making those videos because I feel like if you have a general idea of the colour theory you can’t really end up with a horrible mud. Plus, what’s the point of playing with watercolours if you are not suppose to mix the colours?
If you meant to make it look that way? We call them earth tones. If you DIDN'T mean to make it look that way? They're called muddy colors. 🤷♀️😂 Seriously, though, SO MANY problems are solved by studying color theory. Color theory upped my art game better than any other tip, trick, or technique I've ever learned.
