Plein Air Painting: Mixing Color

Kristian Matthews says October 16, 2015

Great explanation of your color mixing process. One question though. You say first you begin by selecting a color from the color wheel. Next you adjust its value. Finally, you gray it down a bit with its complement. I fully understand step 1 and 3, but as far as step 2, adjusting the value, could you please explain how you go about doing that?

If you pick blue-green for instance, and you decide it needs to go darker, do you add a darker blue into it? If you started with cerulean blue, and decided it needed to be darker, adding ultramarine blue would darken it but also shift it toward red. So how do you adjust value alone without affecting hue and temperature?

Thanks so much for posting these videos. They’re very helpful!

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