Are you an artist who struggles with color? Do you find yourself unable to achieve color harmony in your artwork? Well you are not alone. Did you know that over 70% of artists admit that color is one of their biggest obstacles? Chances are that you are amongst those 70% or you would not be reading this article right now.

If you take the time to work on the exercise below, you will have a new appreciation and understanding of color, and it won’t take years of practice either. You can become more knowledgeable about color after only one session.

What exactly am I talking about?

I am talking about an exercise that will greatly increase your understanding of the properties and interactivity of the colors on your palette. I am talking about creating color charts and lots of them.

You see, the problem with many artists, myself included at one time, is that we tend to just jump right into our work haphazardly without learning proper foundational skills. This will only create frustration and waste lots of your time and materials.

So how will creating color charts benefit you as an artist?

Well apart from understanding how colors interact when mixed with one another, you will also have a resource or tool that you can reference over and over again.

Lets say you have a particular color scheme in mind…say a complimentary scheme of red and green. Just pull out your red and green color charts and you will instantly know what colors you could use and how to mix them. No more guesswork or wasted paint!

You will also be introduced to color mixtures that you never thought were possible. Far too often, we fall into the habit of using the same colors over and over again when something else may work better. Why limit yourself when you have an almost limitless palette of colors at your disposal?

Ok lets create our first color chart…

Here is what you will need:

1. Paint – It doesn’t matter what colors you choose to begin with. When I did my first color chart, I wanted to start by mixing greens. I love landscape painting, so I wanted to see how many different versions of green I could create from various combinations of yellow, blue, black, red and orange.
2. Support – I like to use canvas boards for my color charts. They are inexpensive and strong and will last a long time if you take good care of them.
3. Brush or Palette Knife – I prefer to use a palette knife to make the swatches if I am using oil or acrylic paint. This way you can just wipe the knife clean when creating a new swatch. Obviously if you are using watercolor, you will need to use a brush.

That’s all you are going to need to get started.

Step 1

To begin with, we need to create a grid on our canvas board. You can use a ruler or other straight edge to create the grid. Make the grid so that it is divided into one inch squares with five rows. Leave some room at the bottom of each column so that you can label it with the specific colors that you used or take other notes.

Step 2

Next, lets pick a color as our starting point. As I said earlier, it doesn’t matter what colors you start with, but for arguments sake, lets begin with Cadmium Yellow Light. Hopefully you have this color in your palette, if not, just use whatever light yellow you have.

Step 3

With your palette knife, fill in the top left square of your grid with your light yellow, straight from the tube.

Step 4

Next fill in the very bottom square of the same column with a mixture of titanium white and a touch of light yellow.

Step 5

Now create a mixture of light yellow and titanium white with a value that is half way between the top and bottom values and put that in the middle square.

Step 6

Now create a mixture of light yellow and white with a value that is half way between the first and third squares and put that mixture in the second square.

Step 7

Repeat the same process for the remaining squares and you have your first column of color swatches completed. You now have five different values of light yellow.

Step 8

Now you can move on to the next column. This time try mixing light yellow with another color from your palette, like orange for instance, with the light yellow predominating slightly. Then you adjust the values of each swatch with white like you did for the first column.

Then just continue the process using all of the colors on your palette. You will now have a ton of new colors that you never knew existed before to breathe life into your next painting.

As Artists we shouldn’t be afraid of color. It should be something that we embrace with open arms. You can master color and become the artist you have always dreamed of. You can learn how to think about color in a whole new way, a way that you never thought was possible!

Follow this link now and learn how to Master Color with over 40 breakthrough color techniques!

Artist Name: Joe Cartwright

Location: Sydney, Australia

Website: www.paintingwithwatercolors.com

Title of Artwork: Venice Sunset

Dimensions of Artwork: 22″ x 32″ unframed

Medium: Watercolor

Support: Paper

Describe this Piece: Venice Sunset – watercolour by Joe Cartwright. Venice is such a wonderful place with a painting around every corner! I spent two weeks there in May 2010 and loved every minute of it. I wanted to capture the beautiful sunset and people walking around enjoying the atmosphere.

Artist Name: Michael Mackellow

Location: Rojales, Costa Blanca, Spain

Title of Artwork: Tiger for Samtec

Dimensions of Artwork: A3

Medium: (Oils, Acrylics, Watercolor, etc.)

Support: (Canvas, Paper, Board, etc.)

Website: http://tyger888.blogspot.com/

Describe this Piece: One of four tigers in watercolor, painted for my friends at Samtec USA

Artist Name: Christine Kane

Location: Chicago, IL USA

Title of Artwork: Before Dusk in Deep Snow

Dimensions of Artwork :   16×20

Medium: Watercolor and Pastel

Website: http://letspaintnature.com

Describe this Piece: This picture was inspired by a hike at Maple Lake in Willow Springs, IL after a heavy snow. I stopped at this particular location to admire the the soft evening colors and deer tracks that lead into the deep forest. Suddendly, I heard crows “cawing” in the distance. I always wanted to remember that moment so it became eternal in my painting. Nature is the greatest teacher.

Name: Jonathan Kwegyir Aggrey

Title: The Heart of Katapor Village

Medium: Watercolor on Paper

Size: 19” x 27”

Location: Accra, Ghana.

Background:

The Heart of Katapor Village

“Katapor is a small traditional town in the central part of Pokuase in the Greater Accra Region where I live. The main occupation in the town is farming and stone cracking by hand. The opened space in the painting is the Heart of Katapor Village where traditional drums are beaten to summon the people to hear an announcement about a festival or any important village matters.

I captured this scene late one morning using a limited palette in a combination of earth colors and greens. I left the areas lit by the sun as white paper and emphasized on the shadows to show the time of the day. The figures and birds in the foreground shows the typical movement of the people and the type of domestic animals commonly found in the village. I infused several colors during the painting process to capture the mood and atmosphere.

I added graceful frontal branches with some leaves on the top left to help balanced with the foliages on the right side of the composition. The brushstrokes are very useful for balancing a painting or to fill up space that looks bare.”