Colour!!🎨👨🏻‍🎨

Surely its elementary you take a dull orange/ yellow and add white to lighten it. you then add green ( blue plus yellow pigments) and you finish up with a coolish yellow called lemon yellow.Wheres the clever part or am i missing something.?.I dont see any primary colours as such RBY....puzzled ...Syd

I think what he means by the 'you can't mix the primary colours' is that conventional wisdom, and a good deal of personal experience, dictates that you can't mix, say, a primary red other than by combining primary reds to make a variant. There is for example no way that I could mix Cadmium Red from other colours, and not only because I can't create cadmium - I could mix Winsor Red with a yellow and perhaps something else to make something very similar to Cadmium Red, but I'm blowed if I'm going to try to, because I'd be there all day, when I've got a nice fat tube of the real thing just waiting for me. But of course you can mix the primaries together, yes. You might also be able to mix a reasonable simulacrum of Cadmium Yellow - it might have the hue of Cad Yellow, but wouldn't have the working properties, and why would you, other than as an experiment, which might be fun, or because you've run out of the Cad Yellow. I could do that in oil paint, I think: but not so sure I could really convince anyone that my Cad Yellow substitute really was Cad Yellow in watercolour. In the example above, that looks like a good approximation to Lemon Yellow or Cadmium Lemon: but Lemon Yellow in the tube tends to be semi-transparent - the white in the mixture will help produce a cool, bright yellow, with the touch of green: but it'll be very opaque. Not that this is a problem necessarily - depends on what you're after. In response to the hues that I like or loathe - I'm never convinced by French Ultramarine in sky painting; not convinced by my efforts with it, anyway; but ultramarine is a superb mixer. Seamas has discussed Cerulean/Coeruleum in another thread, and I've never been overly keen on that colour because it can be so extremely weak on its own (but it depends on who made it). It's still good in subtle mixes. Viridian and Pthalo Green are entirely horrid used un-mixed, but again, excellent mixers. Terre Verte is also a great mixer, dull as death on its own, and a wonderful basis for painting flesh. I'm not convinced of the advantages offered by Cobalt Violet over other violets, which is just as well because it's murderously expensive. Colours I can't be doing with - well, I've never yet found an Olive Green that was anything other than nauseating; I do NOT like Ivory Black; in watercolour, the only tube of Davey's Grey I've ever tried was entirely disgusting - I've heard others praise it, though, so perhaps I just got the wrong company's version of it; and we all know of colours that can march into Poland if you let them - the Pthalos, Prussian Blue, in particular: although used with caution, I'm very fond of those colours (I know Syd hates Pthalo Green - and I must say, I've a lot of sympathy for that point of view; a little goes a VERY long way). I had a prejudice against Burnt Umber, especially in watercolour, until I watched one of Alan Owen's videos and he showed what can be done with it, and what a delicate colour it can be: I use it much more often now. And I'm very fond of Rowney Golden Yellow in oil - it has a zing which is extremely hard to replicate with a mix; though it's also dangerously seductive - use too much of it in too many places and it will start to ruin your painting. The same is true of Winsor and Newton's superb Cadmium Lemon in acrylic - unmatchable, but you do have to be restrained with it. Their Sap Green in acrylic is also distinctive, sharp and appealing - but again, use too much and it just takes over the painting. Insidiously, because its influence isn't immediately obvious - you won't necessarily know you've used too much until you do. It's great mixed, and applied with a painting knife. I have worries about its lightfastness in anything other than acrylic, though. There are more colours I like than those that I don't; and even some I once didn't like (eg, Rowney Emerald) have proved to be useful subsequently. So much, I think, depends more on where you use a colour than what colour you use - some can carry a passage unmixed. Others will never look right on their own (Hooker's Green, for instance) but work very well mixed with others. Even Indigo, and the modern version of Vandyke Brown, which I long avoided having managed to commit an absolute atrocity with them, have come into their own in some recent paintings. I shall be delighted to return to this subject, but I've got to finish a painting by Thursday morning, and so far all I've got is the drawing and underpainting - so there'll be much relief that this will be my last long thread for a few days.

Snap, crossed with Seamas's reply to Syd - confirms what I thought he meant though, so - as a very annoying young friend of mine is apt to remark - 'all cool'.

Payne's Grey for me, couldn't do without it. I very rarely use black now, mainly Payne's Grey and Burnt Umber mixed.

Seamas - I'm coming to this late, having been toiling all day and after dinner with a bottle of wine, so bear with me.... I'm not sure there's a real alternative to Cobalt Violet - but there's Ultramarine Violet, Dioxazine Violet, Spectrum Violet, Prism Violet, and obviously the colours you can get by mixing a red-inclining blue (usually ultramarine, but some versions of Cobalt) with a crimson red, eg Permanent Rose. Experiment with them. Not all of these are available in oil, but mixing Ultramarine with a crimson (one of the few lightfast ones) will give you a range of hues comparable to Cobalt Violet and offering the same or better variations in mixes. Crude though it sounds, Permanent Mauve is also capable of a good deal of versatility; even Mars Violet gives you extraordinary ranges of colour, adjusted with others. Payne's Grey/Neutral Tint can be mixed in any number of ways - I have a tube in acrylic, not so sure I have in oil, know I have in watercolour, but it's entirely a convenience mixture for me - it's so easy to mix - there's a hundred ways of doing so, brown and blue being the most obvious in various combinations; you'll know of course that mixing a green-blue like Prussian or Pthalo with a reddish-yellowish brown (which most are) will give you a deep green; whereas if you want a chromatic black, use Ultramarine or Cobalt. But not Cobalt Hue, which is nearly always a Pthalo variant. I have to confess I'm a touch on the inebriated side tonight, so please return with more sensible thoughts than mine, and I shall respond in the cold, unforgiving light of day.

Fiona - still piddled, I'm afraid, but never reluctant to jump in - Veridian, Viridian, however it's spelled, is an entirely loathsome colour on its own....... you're quite right. It's OK for painting municipal park benches or green-baize doors in snooker clubs, but otherwise is just horrid, and the same is true of Pthalo Green, and Hookers Green (the latter being a very different kettle of fish, of which more in a minute). Mixed with Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Yellow Ochre, with or without white, Viridian comes into its own - it's a great mixer; softer and warmer than Pthalo Green, which also has its place, it can be the perfect colour to paint ivy, darker greens, glazes: just never use it on its own. Hookers Green - the watercolour and acrylic artist Charles Evans recommends it, never for use on its own - it's hideously unnatural - but as a mixer: with yellows, earth reds it's useful. I'm suspicious of it, because some versions are a mix of an unspecified green and black, and it can be very deadening - but again, it can be enlivened with earth reds, earth yellows, primary yellows, giving you a whole extra range of colour. Most ready-made greens are not of much use on their own, but brilliant in mixes; a possible exception is the quite expensive Cobalt Green - that can stand on its own, but most can't. Use them in mixes, though, and they can enormously extend your palette.

Sandra - agreed.

PS - Seamas, realize I haven't answered your specific question re Cobalt Violet, violet mixed with an orange to make red - I haven't tried that experiment is why.... and can't at the minute, because I don't have the colours to hand; got Permanent Mauve, Mars Violet Deep, even the Cobalt Violet and Violet Deep, but not the others in oil. I have a bit of Spectrum Violet in acrylic, though ..... will give this a try when I've the time. It'd be good if we could all get these colours together, like an art store, from a multiplicity of manufacturers, and such, believe me, is my dream!

Yup, they'll all work. The first one (Burnt Umber and Cad Yellow Light) is more likely to deliver you a brown, though; you could try Burnt Sienna instead of the Umber. Or Prussian Blue and Burnt Umber, to give a deep, metallic green. Hansa Yellow isn't really Lemon Yellow, by the way - there are many varieties of both: Lemon Yellow CAN be Hansa Yellow, but there are other versions of Lemon Yellow. See the Handprint website for more information, though it's concentrated on watercolour.

If Cad Yellow and Burnt Umber make a green, I am prepared to pose for a portrait wearing only a tutu. There's no blue in either colour, and without that you won't get green. A grey, a brown, a sort-of orange yes, but not green. I shall try this later and will be horrified if I'm wrong. But not as horrified as you'll all be to see me in a tutu. Seamas - yes, student grade Viridian is usually a mix of Pthalo and something else, and doesn't work like the somewhat more expensive pigment. I think you've not much choice in acrylic, though, because Viridian can't be made to work with acrylic resins. Pthalo green has a place in oil painting - Syd Edward is unlikely to agree with that, he hates it - but I do not like the colour called Viridian when it isn't; it's misleading, as you know when you try painting with it in the belief that it'll do what real Viridian does.

I am just loving this thread and learning so much, must try out some of these mixes. Useful to know that some greens claiming to be viridian in fact are not. Will have to look more carefully at paint tubes before buying (which involves remembering to take my reading specs with me).This discussion prompted me to check my Liquitex professional acrylic artists colour which claims to be viridian, turns out to be a single pigment hue called Chlorinated Copper Pthalocyanine - who'da thought! And Robert, if you can be this lucid and knowledgeable when "piddled" as you put it, you must be pretty amazing when not!