Quinacridone Red Color Chart
I recently began a color mixing project to get to know my acrylic paints better and practice mixing colors. It's an exercise that I heard is contained in Richard Schmid's Alla Prima, of which I recently ordered the most recent version (Alla Prima II). I haven't received my copy yet, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it exactly as he proposes but I'm learning so much about the paints I've chosen the way I'm going about it and about how the various color hues and temperatures affect one another.
This is a bit of a time-consuming undertaking but it's one that I've found tremendously enjoyable as it's almost meditative. It doesn't require much thought or concentration so I can do it with my kids around or in little bursts here and there when I have 10 minutes to spare. I find when I'm painting an actual painting frequent interruptions disrupt my creative flow and the paints dry up before I can back to art making.
If find yourself in a creative block or stuck in a rut, this is a wonderful exercise to get you smooshing paint around and making forward progress. I guarantee you'll learn something in the process. Plus, at the end of it, you'll have these awesome color chart reference cards to look at whenever you're at a loss matching a particular color.
I used heavy body acrylic paints and have indicated the manufacturer in parenthesis below. As you will notice all but one is from Golden. I have many more colors than this (especially in the fluid acrylics) but I had to start somewhere so I picked a few that I always turn to (like Quin Magenta and Cobalt Teal) and others about which I was curious or fearful (Quin Violet and Phthalo Green, respectively). The only thing I would definitely try to keep in mind if you want to try this at home... when selecting your colors choose at least two reddish colors, two or three yellows, two blues, and one each of orange, green, and purple.
The colors I chose to use are: Quinacridone Red (Golden), Quinacridone Magenta (Golden), Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold (Golden), Cadmium Yellow Medium (W&N), Yellow Ochre (Golden), Phthalo Green - Blue Shade (Golden), Cobalt Teal (Golden), Turquoise Phthalo (Golden), Ultramarine Blue (Golden), Cerulean Blue Deep (Golden), Phthalo Blue - Red Shade (Golden), Quinacridone Violet (Golden). The white I used for mixing is Titanium White (Golden).
I made a grid on my paper with a regular pencil and a ruler in one of large spiral art journals that has cut-away pages. Each square is about 1" by 1". I left a few extra columns at the end in case I want to add to the color experimentation later down the road. I'm keeping the pages bound for now but will eventually cut them all out when I complete all of them so I have an easy-access color reference chart in my studio for matching colors, picking color palettes, and color inspiration.
The chart I've posted above is the Quinacridone Red card. Quin Red is the main feature here and is shown in all its glory in the first column. The top left square is Quin Red at full strength and as you go down in that column there is more and more white mixes in. This card doesn't go as light as I would have liked in the bottom squares but it was the first card I created so all mistakes are expected and forgiven. Haha! In subsequent cards, I'll do a better job of going really light in the bottom row. Almost to white.
To make the other top row colors I use Quinacridone Red and add only a slight touch of the other color listed at the top of the table. The goal isn't to see what colors they make at a 50/50 mix, but instead see how a slight amount of the additional color shifts the temperature and/or hue of the original color.
Even in this early stage of things, I've learned that quinacridones and phthalos are quite powerful and a little truly goes a very looooong way.
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