Robbyrockett2
Air-Valve Autobot!
So I've started to do some experiments with color, the end goals are
1. Give myself a better understanding of mixing as it applies specifically to paint and especially to wicked color
2. Create a basic mixing wheel with formulas that anyone can use to get in the neighborhood of the color they want quickly and without wasting a bunch of paint
This will be long and boring, or fascinating maybe but either way it will get a little complex.
The end result will be very simple, so this thread is more to show the process of how im getting there and share what I learn along the way.
These very first bits are crude and rather inaccurate, but they are there to demonstrate certain points to show why I go forward in the way that I do.
I will get more accurate as I go.
Initially @huskystafford was going to try and create some reference card book type thing for himself.
I had an idea of the way I would organize it, which turns out to be wrong (It would work, just wouldnt be the best)
There are two main reasons I believe people have a hard time mixing paint especially for airbrushing.
1. Your usually creating such a small amount of a mix that minor adjustments are extremely critical
2. Most color theory is based on hypothetical perfect paints and generally skips the effect of value.
So that looking at a wheel would lead one to believe you could mix equal parts of say yellow and blue to get green, It doesnt work out that way. Most of us realize quickly that the colors vary greatly in strength.
Reason two is why my original Idea of organizing a "mixing wheel" would not work out great.
Here is a fairly typical wheel.
If I were to organize a mixing wheel by equal volumes blues would dominate everything on either side of blue, red would dominate over yellow and youd end up with a tiny amount of yellows and the center of the the wheel would off to the right towards the edge on this particualr wheel.
Most wheels you see will be flat like this but yet evenly distributed somehow, this is not reality.
Each of the "pure" colors reside at different values and a color wheel actually looks more like this;
The lower values are closer to where black resides on the greyscale, the lower they are, the stronger they are in a mix. So to mix equal volumes of yellow and blue and get green, they must be the same value.
In the first picture at the top are the colors straight from the bottle. As you move down blue and red have had white added to take them closer to the value of yellow. I did not take them all the way even but I did adjust them enough to illustrate the concept.
The little dots are the result of mixing yellow and blue or yellow and red at 1:1 ratios.
You can see that yellow is nearly completely drowned out at the original values but even though they arent equal yet, at the bottom you see you get much closer to green or orange at 1:1 ratios.
The picture on the right is the colors converted to greyscale to show the values.
So the darker or lower the value, the more dominant the color will be.
To make a flat and evenly distributed wheel you would need all the values the same and you would be looking at yellow and some very pale blue and pink.
Or
You can adjust for this by using less of the stronger colors.
To be continued.....
1. Give myself a better understanding of mixing as it applies specifically to paint and especially to wicked color
2. Create a basic mixing wheel with formulas that anyone can use to get in the neighborhood of the color they want quickly and without wasting a bunch of paint
This will be long and boring, or fascinating maybe but either way it will get a little complex.
The end result will be very simple, so this thread is more to show the process of how im getting there and share what I learn along the way.
These very first bits are crude and rather inaccurate, but they are there to demonstrate certain points to show why I go forward in the way that I do.
I will get more accurate as I go.
Initially @huskystafford was going to try and create some reference card book type thing for himself.
I had an idea of the way I would organize it, which turns out to be wrong (It would work, just wouldnt be the best)
There are two main reasons I believe people have a hard time mixing paint especially for airbrushing.
1. Your usually creating such a small amount of a mix that minor adjustments are extremely critical
2. Most color theory is based on hypothetical perfect paints and generally skips the effect of value.
So that looking at a wheel would lead one to believe you could mix equal parts of say yellow and blue to get green, It doesnt work out that way. Most of us realize quickly that the colors vary greatly in strength.
Reason two is why my original Idea of organizing a "mixing wheel" would not work out great.
Here is a fairly typical wheel.
If I were to organize a mixing wheel by equal volumes blues would dominate everything on either side of blue, red would dominate over yellow and youd end up with a tiny amount of yellows and the center of the the wheel would off to the right towards the edge on this particualr wheel.
Most wheels you see will be flat like this but yet evenly distributed somehow, this is not reality.
Each of the "pure" colors reside at different values and a color wheel actually looks more like this;
The lower values are closer to where black resides on the greyscale, the lower they are, the stronger they are in a mix. So to mix equal volumes of yellow and blue and get green, they must be the same value.
In the first picture at the top are the colors straight from the bottle. As you move down blue and red have had white added to take them closer to the value of yellow. I did not take them all the way even but I did adjust them enough to illustrate the concept.
The little dots are the result of mixing yellow and blue or yellow and red at 1:1 ratios.
You can see that yellow is nearly completely drowned out at the original values but even though they arent equal yet, at the bottom you see you get much closer to green or orange at 1:1 ratios.
The picture on the right is the colors converted to greyscale to show the values.
So the darker or lower the value, the more dominant the color will be.
To make a flat and evenly distributed wheel you would need all the values the same and you would be looking at yellow and some very pale blue and pink.
Or
You can adjust for this by using less of the stronger colors.
To be continued.....