First Color Panel

First panel.

What did I learn?

I learned the rose tones that can come out of three very different reds just by adding Flake White. I can see the flesh colors used by a master painter. I’ve recently found the work of Richard Schmid (and highly recommend “Alla Prima II The Expanded Edition). The colors he uses for flesh tones are fantastic, beautiful, make perfect sense, but working through five values of each red showed me where they come from. Trial and error might have gotten there but it would not have been as straightforward.

I have a color mixing poster.

I have a book of color recipes.

The chart and the book help with basic inspiration, to get in the ballpark of a color. But they do not explicitly show what happens on changes in value, in tone. And value is way more critical for what I’m trying to say, to show in a painting, than a specific color. I can use some some pretty arbitrary and unconnected-with-nature colors, and still represent a sky, trees, a mountain, a sunset.

Wolf Kahn, and birch trees.

Value from light to dark is everything. This first panel brings each color to life directly.

—spence