Reply To: Is it important to know the numbers of the pigment?

[Jennifer McLean]

Hi MMcBuck, I was much in your position only about two to three years ago, I knew enough to know I knew nothing! It was incredibly frustrating and I had no idea how to learn what I wanted to learn. I had books but I have a real problem learning from books, the info swims in front of me and doesn’t settle in my brain. I found reading Roz Stendahl’s site Rozwoundup (http://rozwoundup.com/blog) and Jane Blundell’s site (https://janeblundellart.blogspot.ca) helped so much. Jane also has a great selection of swatches of nearly all professional brands, click on “tutorials & Resources in the upper right side to see them all (https://www.janeblundellart.com)

Although I warn you, Roz’s site is a rabbit hole of information and she advocates heavily for understanding color mixing. I get how important that is but I have learned enough that I now don’t pursue it ardently, I let it happen organically. If you want to read about my color choices and why go to my palette here. (http://justaddwatersilly.com/my-palette/)

While you’re building your palette, try to think of it as a split primary one until you build up enough colors that it won’t matter. A split primary is a warm and cool of each color, so a warm red would be an orange type and a cool red would be a quin red or a quin rose. Warm reds have yellow undertones and cool reds have blue undertones. Same for yellows, get a warm and cool of each, so a new gamboge would be a warm, and a lemon yellow would be cool, you can also just get a primary yellow like a pure yellow by Schmincke, one of my very favorite colors. Same for blues, a warm and a cool, you can even do this for the secondary colors. You can always google what is a warm blue, yellow, red, green etc to find out which color is which. Or, google the exact color you love, like “is phthalo blue warm or cool?”, you can even easier, use jane Blundell’s site again, here’s her link for cool blues… (https://www.janeblundellart.com/cool-blues.html)

Hope this helps! IF you have other questions, just ask, we’re all here to help and it’s always fun to get a gab session going about color!