Colour Demystified (a Complete Guide To Mixing And Using Watercolours)

Unravel the mysteries of colour and learn how to be more confident with your watercolour choices.

Colour Demystified will banish the all-too-common confusion over the watercolour palette and give painters the confidence to experiment with colour mixing.

This book demystifies colour, and helps artists understand how colour works in a highly visual way through the use of colour charts accompanied by examples, practical exercises, and analyses of watercolour paintings.

Numerous artworks by a variety of contemporary artists are featured in the book, covering a broad range of subjects and palettes. Topics such as granulation, iridescence, staining strength, and transparent and opaque colours are explained clearly and simply, and there is practical guidance on colour relationships, using colour to create space, and how to be more creative with colour. 

Armed with a clearer understanding of colour and how it looks and behaves on paper, artists will be encouraged to be more bold and creative in their use of colour in their art. 

Introduction 6
Materials 8
The language of colour 14
Pigments Demystified 38
Tone & Value 58
Step-by-step project: Leaf 66
Palettes 72
Step-by-step project: Carte Postale Birds 86
The interaction of colour 98
Step-by-step project: Christmas Cactus 104
Modifying your Colours 112
Step-by-step project: Daina’s Teapot 120
Glazing 126
Step-by-step project: Still Life with Tulips 132
Mineral pigments & Luminescent watercolours 136
Step-by-step project: Inside, Outside 144
Experimentation & inspiration 148
Step-by-step project: Trees and Birds 154
Glossary 158
Index 160

Non-professional artistic color education starts and stops with the color wheel, primary and secondary hues, and complementary and analogous colors. Award-winning UK watercolorist Collins (Painting Flowers with Impact in Watercolour, 2005) changes the conversation by delving into all the different ways hues, shades, and tones can play together. She explores topics like palettes, interactions, and glazing in detail with the intention of inspiring new thinking and experimentation, and furthers her cause with several different gallery-type examples, 16 worksheets that showcase techniques (painting a freehand tulip, for example), and seven step-by-step projects—still life with tulips, carte postale birds, even just one leaf. To amplify the book’s title, she includes "demystifying” sidebars, observations, and recommendations that strengthen the artistic process, such as “the look of yellow differs in the center of green and red versus orange and green.” A book with an aesthetic sensibility that more than lives up to the title. Includes a glossary.

Although this books is written to give painters the confidence to experiment with colour mixing, it can demystify colour for anyone. If you''d like to understand how colour works in a highly visual way using colour charts and examples, practical exercises and analyses of watercolour paintings, this book is for you!

An appreciation of colour is so important to any artist, and we love the way that Julie Collins shares her enthusiasm and knowledge in Colour Demystified – A Complete Guide to Mixing and Using Watercolours.

In her introduction, she explains how our surroundings and the weather conditions can affect our use of colour, for example, the beautiful light that attracts so many painters to St Ives in Cornwall. She also explains how inspiring it is to spend time looking at the works of other artists, examples of which are also included in this book.

In her