Which colours make a good colour library?

[Shobber]

Hi, Possibly this question has been asked before, but I could not find an answer with a quick seach, so here goes (again?).

At the moment I have the basic red, yellow, and blue colours on my shelf, and of course black and white. So far these have been enough as I haven't done much colour work; only block colours if any colour at all. However I want to start a works involving colour (not sure which yet) so am thinking to build up a decent library of colours that will be good for most works / scenes (e.g. colour portraits, landscapes, buildings, etc) without getting too precise about the actual tone of the colour at this stage. Goal is to save some time by not having to keep mixing commonly used colours using primaries, but to not go overboard by buying all available colours.

Also any tips or what colours (or sets of) are good for particular scenes?

Cheers,

 

[foreveryoung001]

Ultimately, I think it would just come down to what you use the most. For me, besides the primaries, I always have some midnight blue on hand, Burnt Umber, and then a few different shades of yellow, from golden ocher to bright yellow, then its just a hodge podge of assorted stuff that I pick up for various projects. For some reason, I always mix my own greens, even though I have a perfectly good green to start as a base... just have never opened the bottle, so that green is just collecting dust. Maybe I go about it wrong, but I started with just the primaries and mixed my own, but over time have just collected other colors that I didn't feel like mixing, or colors that were for specialty effects... some gold flake, pearls, etc...

 

[Squishy]

To be honest, you have pretty much everything you need already. I don't have much cash to splash on paint, so I (using wicked paints) have and opaque black and white, and detail (trans) blue red and yellow, I mix pretty much everything with this basic set up. I have also got along the way, a smoke detail black, a gold, a purple that I was given and a detail flesh tone. The purple I could mix but I use it cos it's there, the smoke black is handy for subtle shading but you could use super reduced black, and the gold was for a specific job and needs a slightly larger nozzle. The flesh tone is very useful though, and not just for skin, but is good as a base to mix earth tones, and other colours from, so I would add that to your basic set too. If you buy loads of colours you will probably still need to mix them, to get what you want, but they may save some time if you can use them as they are. But, as you will probably need to mix stuff any way, it is good to get used to getting your own colours, it may take some time to do, but you will save a lot of money just using the basic set. Then if you need something specific like an effects paint such as metallic or pearl you can add them as you go along. I'm sure people have their own way of doing things, but this works for me. You just need to experiment and play around with mixing, if you spray a bit of the colour you make onto some card (remember the base colour you paint on will affect how the colour looks) and then right a recipe next to it i.e 1 drop yellow, 1 blue, 1 white, then you will build yourself a colour chart and know how to recreate each colour.

 

[flycatchr]

Heya Shobber
I started with the same as you - primary colours. I think it really depends on what you want to paint. skulls - you could get away with ONLY a tranparent smoke. portraits - pic a colour and do a monochrome. some peeps like mixing their own colors from scratch. I have three different brand names in primary colours BUT i have fallen in love with the wicked fluorescent colours I used for a friends helmet. http://www.airbrushforum.org/works-progress-finished-artworks/7079-space-helmet.html
what I am saying is that different strokes for different folks. another question is what you local art shop might carry or how easy it is to get airbrush paint in Cambridge. Com art is an awesome forgiving paint and I like the transparent smoke for a few reasons - its not as dark as black, its great for shadows and its an easy paint to reduce and sprays well. Andre likes his Marissa paints (etac IIRC).

 

[flycatchr]

Ultimately, I think it would just come down to what you use the most. For me, besides the primaries, I always have some midnight blue on hand, Burnt Umber, and then a few different shades of yellow, from golden ocher to bright yellow, then its just a hodge podge of assorted stuff that I pick up for various projects. For some reason, I always mix my own greens, even though I have a perfectly good green to start as a base... just have never opened the bottle, so that green is just collecting dust. Maybe I go about it wrong, but I started with just the primaries and mixed my own, but over time have just collected other colors that I didn't feel like mixing, or colors that were for specialty effects... some gold flake, pearls, etc...

@FEY - I was told by an artist that my first green I ever mixed was awesome - LOL she said that mixing your own green is always better then the bottled green.
@sqhuishy - thats a great idea with the cards - but i have sooo much paper hanging around my little corner of my room that more would be chaos ... hahaha

 

[HCP-draggin]

For a bare minimum palate, I would recommend the primary colors (yellow, blue, and red) as well as the secondary colors (purple/violet, orange, and green). That will let you mix the majority of the colors on the color wheel. You may want to add a cyan and a magenta, as well. I like having a burnt sienna on hand, too.

On Dru Blairs website (airbrushworkshop.com) there is a color wheel that you should be able to "save as" and print off. The nice thing about that color wheel is that is shows, fairly accurately, what color you can expect when mixing two colors (or three, etc). You simply locate the color you're starting with, and draw a straight line to the color you're mixing with. The result will be somewhere in that spectrum.

Eddy Wouters has a similar color wheel designed specifically for the E'Tac palate, as well (Dru's is based on the Holbien colors he used for most of his career, and which the Wicked Detail and Illustration palates are based off of.)

 

[Shobber]

Some great advice guys. Thanks!
One interesting snippet from Dru's airbrushworkshops.com website is " A tendency of novice artists is to use "out of the bottle" applications of color that are much too pure in saturation to be representative of reality. Most colors within our visual realm tend to have at least some degree of contamination --or gray-- in them.
". I would have struggled for ages with saturated colours and been kicking myself in frustration. I can imagine that creating realistic colours takes a lot of practice and experimentation. I'm a log way off being able to do that, but maybe now I'll look at colours a bit differently.

 

[AndreZA]

The one colour chart I have for brush painting, says you mix a bit of white with each colour before you mix it together. The chart is made by The color wheel company in the US.

 

[ad fez]

Hey shob I think the others have you covered. ... I gota few colours but generallyi just use them for different mono work so can't give you to much help. ... can't wait to meet you next week Bro

 

[Shobber]

Likewise ad fez. Also looking fwd to hearing about you homemade silent compressor project.