I'm ready for transparents (or so it seems)

[Mr. Magoo]

I started a mural a few years ago of a tropical underwater scene, acrylics and paint brushes. Made up of a number of 3' panels, it goes in that space between kitchen countertops and wall cabinets, about 18". The reason I bore you with these details is this: there are 3 flourescent under-cabinet lights that shine down on these panels so I designed the mural's lightness and darkness (direction of light source) to coincide with the location of the lights. This means that there is a lot of blending and creating light gradients.

This is a whole lot more difficult with a brush than airbrush, which is nearly made for this kind of work. In fact, I am retouching all the panels with airbrush to give some consistency and I've got one panel nearly done using only opaques. What I got so far isn't bad, but could definitely be better. I'm assuming that using transparents can in many ways, is like using a wash with water colors. Don't have any transparents so need to buy some.

Yes, I saw that post by Marissa but haven't read it yet but will.

QUESTION #1: being a little short on funds right now (as usual), which colors are the most used, or is that totally dependent on types of work one does? I thought I noticed stores only carried what amounted to primary colors. Then I noted that one seller has a 6 bottle set for $27.95 and another 6 bottle set at $89.95. Why such an incredible price spread? or could that be a typo? As I recall, the first was Createx and the other U.S. Airbrush.

QUESTION #2: I thought I read somewhere that we can create our own transparents simply by diluting opaques. Is this true, or just wishful thinking?

 

[bex]

depends if you want to mix colours up yourself or just use straight from the bottle. you can make most colours from a red, blue, yellow they are your primary colours. think of a printer it has 3 colours.. also black and white are good colours. you can get normally get 6-8-10 colours kits from most the companies and safe a few quid. but i would definitely say red, blue. yellow black and white. possibly brown/sepia well used colour for shadows and darkening other shades.

 

[Squishy]

You can make opaques more transparent seming, but the more layers you add the more opaque it becomes again, and IMO compared to transparents can appear almost chalky looking. With trans you can create many new shades and awesome blends with layering, but using reduced opaques will cover the colour below with layers.

So you can get a more trans look, but it will not behave like trans, so it depends on what you want to achieve as to how useful it is.

A primary set is pretty much all I use, but you can get all the colours individually.

 

[musicmacd]

Primary set plus moss green and blue violet for under water scenes?

 

[Mr. Magoo]

Primary set plus moss green and blue violet for under water scenes?

That's a tough one because at 30' you loose all color starting with the reds so it becomes a blue/gray world. Also depends on water clarity, just as air depends on humidity, pollution. Few artists would try to paint it photo realistic as the result is not very inspiring.Best to paint it as if the water weren't there, or at least add more color than one would really see.

 

[Mr. Magoo]

So you can get a more trans look, but it will not behave like trans, so it depends on what you want to achieve as to how useful it is.

That's what I wanted to know so I just bought only the primary set. Thanks

 

[markjthomson]

Good choice... learning to colour match is really useful and with the primaries there aren't many you can't do...