This is as old as the hills, or in my case, at least some 25 years old, and I use it all the time when I paint. My colleague and friend, artist Marjorie Bronsted told me of a desire her students at that time were asking her to do, and she described it to me and I thought, "I'm going to make one of those!"
At first when she was explaining it, I thought, "This is a waste, I know how to mix colors!" But then as she went on, week after week of explaining to me how the students were gathering so much from it, I decided to drop in on one of her classes (which was adult education classes and we were wonderfully assigned right next to each other), and I just knew after seeing the students working on it, that I wanted to create one for myself.
I went home and cut out the needed canvas which I had laying around the house (you start from canvas on a roll, not the precut pads, they're junk, and not from a canvas...simple gessoed canvas from a roll).
After that I decided how big I wanted the little squares. Once I decided on that, I measured so carefully where the placement of the squares were going to be. It took me FOUR nights to draw in these silly little squares. Later when I showed my students the end result, one of my students did the chart and said she used one of those plastic baskets that have a similar grid. (Don't you just love those smart-ass people...???) Haha...she was SMART and clever!
Then I decided on the colors I seem to use the most. There are so many color palettes available out there, it seems each teacher has their own personal favorites and it all depends on what you paint, be it portraits or landscapes or flowers, whatever...of which colors you like, the vibrancy of teals and turquoises, or the earthly shades of siennas and umbers. Use the colors you seem drawn to.
Please note, I made this chart when I used roughly 20 colors, and chopped off a few so there wouldn't be so much to this chart. Now after owning an art supply store, I had access to discovering new colors and wow...my palette mixing range has grown.
And remember you'll get those artists who swear by the three or four colors to mix everything. These are normally purist or those who paint outdoors and don't want to lug around tubes and tubes of paint. (Which I can respect, I lugged around five pounds of green paint all around Europe.)
Anyway, below are the photos with some descriptions.
Plan to use a whole LARGE tube of white to do this project, but know you will save tons of money in the long run having this chart and you will learn more than you'll ever imagine. One thing I loved about this project was all this color mixing at one time was in my head...and it was like putting it down on paper and it felt good to not have to rely on memory. Made painting life much easier.
Here are the color mixing charts I made 25 or so years ago and still use today (even though Chinese red is no longer made.) Oh, and be sure when you make yours, to stay with the same brand all the time, as colors vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Alizarin made in one company will not be like the next.
I'm so glad I used the quality canvas and not canvas pads, as this has seen it's finer day. True story about this color chart is I thought I lost it at one point or thought someone stole it! For nearly I year I searched high and low to find it, at my art supply store where I also used to teach about 200 students.
One day, a Canadian student came up to me all apologetic saying she was so sorry she had put it in with her supplies not knowing until she got back up to Canada. Since this was before emails, she waited the nearly six-seven months until she returned. I don't know why she never sent me a message in the mail or called me, but she didn't, perhaps she was embarrassed. She did say she didn't want to sent it in the mail and for that I am grateful. I was just happy to see it. What she did do those is she used it as a guide for about a month to see if she'd like it and she LOVED it, enough so that she made her own. It was all worth it. And I had my chart back.
Students used to bribe me with money to make them a chart but nope, no way. It was something they had to learn. Besides, it's a lot of work!
The ones who made it swear by it.
Hope this helps and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at
KathleenEKelly@comcast.net
