Tag: colors

How I Choose Colors – Watercolor Painting Advice | Liron’s Podcast – Episode 71

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Today I want to teach you how I go about choosing my colors for watercolor painting.

We will talk about both the MACRO and the MICRO.

How I Choose my Colors – Macro

Colors on a macro level means – what colors do I even have on my palette? What colors are my go-to?

Generally speaking, there are a couple of criteria I look into when choosing which colors to purchase. Here are some of them.

Primary colors – I generally work mostly with primary colors. I don’t like convenience mixtures as much, and prefer to mix my own.

So I make sure to always have 1-2 versions of every primary color in my palette – blues, reds and yellows.

Temperatures – I am in the “I care more about the values rather than a specific color” camp (gee, that’s a long name!). But one thing I do pay attention to is temperature.

I find this is important for creating a sense of depth in my works.

Lightfastness – This basically means how much resistant the paint is to light. Lower lightfastness means that with continuous exposure to light, the paint will fade / change over time.

I prefer my paints to stay the same long into the future, so I make sure to use lightfast paints as much as possible, especially when it comes to works made for clients.

Range of Values – This is crucial for me. I tend to create strong contrasts in my works. And I need paints that can mix dark values. This is why I try to use paints that have a large range of values.

This is why I love, for example – Phthalo Blue. It can simply get so dark, which makes it very useful. Another paint in this category is Carbazole violet (and so despite it being a secondary color, I still use it for this specific merit).

Transparency – Lately I’ve come to love transparent watercolors more and more. I find they mix more easily and predictably.

This is a matter of personal taste really, so see what works for you.

These are all guidelines I use for choosing my colors on a macro level.

How I Choose my Colors – Micro

Now I’ll explain how I choose colors while working on a painting.

I get asked about this ALL THE TIME.

INTUITION

People always seem to wonder how I “knew” to use a specific paint somewhere.

The answer is simpler than people think. I developed an intuition for using different colors. This means I don’t know exactly what the end result will look like, but I do have a sense for what will work out.

Minimal Palette – One of my guiding principles are to use as few paints as I can. I find this leads to better color harmony (all mixes stem from the same 3-5 paints). But in addition to harmony, it also simplifies the work process – less decisions to make (;

Temperature – I talked about this earlier. When choosing what color to use, I almost always take temperature into account. Is this a direct warm sunlight? Then I’ll probably use yellow. Is it a mid-value? Perhaps red. A dark shadow? Blue.

These can of course be alternated. I spice up my shadows with warm colors as well. Shadows aren’t monotone.

Exaggeration – Sometimes I’ll simply exaggerate the color bias I see. So if there’s a building wall that’s slightly brown / red – I may paint it using a PURE red. It may seem like too much initially, but I find that I can very easily mute it down by glazing over it with blue, for example.

Most of this really isn’t science. Rather – it’s more of a habit, stylistic choice or trial and error.

See What Colors Work for YOU

The main advice I can give YOU, is to see what works best for you. Don’t worry about my own paints – experiment and see what looks good to your eyes, and how it works with your style.

And with that being said – let’s move onto the Artist Corner.

Artist Corner

Today’s featured artist is Manolo Jimenez. Not to be confused with the football manager of the AEK Athens team, our Manolo is a watercolor painter.

I couldn’t find much information about him, but he is a fantastic painter. His focus, from the works I’ve seen is on larger scale compositions, relative to the focal point. This means the center of focus usually takes up a small part of the painting. So it could be a large corridor in a building, with a tiny single figure, for example.

He is a member of the Association of Watercolors of Andalucia, and exhibits both in Spain and worldwide.

You can see some of his fantastic works here: Manolo Jimenez

And Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

— Liron

Use Pure Colors in Your Watercolor Painting

Hi there!

Today I want to present to you a painting process I did a while ago.

It’s not my best painting. However, it’s an experiment I did with preserving the purity of colors and letting them mix on the palette.

You can watch the entire process below, and scroll down for the written version (:

Use Pure Colors in Your Watercolor Painting

So here’s the scene I wanted to paint.

And here’s the drawing stage.

Notice it’s quite the busy scene. There are many cars, people and buildings. This was very challenging to break down.

I think this is actually one part where I “failed” with the painting process. With that being said, I still did a decent job simplifying it.

The funny part is that, I think, the drawing itself is inaccurate, especially in regards to its perspective.

In any case – off we go with the first wash.

First Wash

This is exactly where I wanted to keep the purity the most. I found out it’s important to get it right in this particular step.

The reason stems from the transparency of watercolor. If you start of with over-mixed, muted colors, the next wash may still show them through. And so, glazing yellow over muted blue won’t do much good (;

Next, we have an additional wash.

Second Wash And Beyond

I’ll admit, this isn’t the best of my work. But I was able to improve the purity.

In this stage it’s important to still use vibrant colors. This is true especially for the areas you want to keep colorful.

After that, I continue adding more layers.

And this is the final result!

I went for a rather complex scene, and challenged myself to try something new. This is why I’m very pleased with the result.

Putting Pure Colors in The Correct Context

It’s important to remember that this is one particular approach out of many. It doesn’t mean you have to ALWAYS ALWAYS keep your colors pure, or avoid grays.

This is a tool to be used at the right moments. You can use it, perhaps, to direct the viewer’s eye in some way. You could use it to create a focal point or area.

And this is it for today. I hope you enjoyed this one! (:

Let me know what you think in a comment below, or under the video.

Also, if you enjoy my content – consider supporting me on Patreon. This REALLY helps (:

And I’ll talk to you soon.

– Liron