Warm and Cool

I've just watched a YouTube video by a US artist named Dianne Mize - who has the interesting point of view that Ultramarine is a cold blue, while Prussian and Pthalo are warm.  This must be intensely confusing to any beginners - and I wouldn't detain anyone with it save for the fact that Ms Mize is actually a capable painter, and that if you were to take the eccentric version of the colour wheel she employs, you'd soon get into a dreadful mess if you were trying to learn the split primary system at the same time, because she turns it all back to front.. Lessons here: the colour wheel is not an infallible guide to mixing colour; its usefulness, if it really has any, is modified by the way it's laid out; that warm and cool don't really have any exact meanings - we do talk about colour "temperature", though, and "warm" paintings: and most of us have a pretty good idea what we mean when we use those words even though they're largely figurative.  Plus - bright has nothing to do with warmth or coolness, and it's here that Ms Mize can mislead.  Yes, you can get a brilliant green if you mix Pthalo Blue with Lemon Yellow, but warm?  No; just bright.  Ultramarine gives you desaturated, fairly dull greens - but that doesn't mean Ultramarine is a cool colour, except in the sense that compared with, say, scarlet, blue is cool... but that doesn't work as a theory; it isn't a theory - we judge the warmth or coolness of colours in relation to other pigments, but also in relation to the class of pigment itself... i.e. there are warm reds and cool reds, but any red is warm in relation to any blue. Still with me....? Should anyone be a beginner, in any medium - most of us have been at this game for a long time, I realize - go with the majority on this: red warm, blue cool, but a blue carrying red (i.e. Ultramarine) is always going to be warmer than a blue that tends toward yellow (which is what makes those blues very good for mixing greens, or bright, acidic greens, anyway). This is what Michael Wilcox's book 'Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green' covered, among other things.  Dianne Mize isn't alone in holding to this arsy-versy colour wheel, but while it's not doing her painting any harm - I suspect she's more instinctual than scientific in her approach - it's not a good teaching aid, to put it at its most mild. 

On the whole, I'd like to see artists abandon the colour wheel altogether - it's only of help if it shows the complementaries clearly, and it's not much help even then.  If it were, Ms Mize wouldn't have come to her odd conclusions.  Interesting about Wilcox - his approach has many facets, but his use of the split primary system isn't new, just more clearly explained than hitherto.  Does it help with colour mixing ... ?  I don't know that it does; I've been mixing colour long before I heard of Michael Wilcox or the split primary system, because a lot of it does come down to, well, just looking at colour.  But it's an invaluable teaching aid - I'd always say of it and any other method, start here, but do go on - go further.  Wilcox himself would never say "abandon Cobalt Teal", to take a rather delicious example, because you can mix it, or get near to it (I'm not at all sure you can, and it would take an awful lot of work which the simple purchase of a tube of paint would save you).  He does say though that millions of hues, tones and tints can be mixed with just 12 colours including white - and it's important to know that. The MW method - the School of Colour method - is very useful in two landscape specifics: painting the blues of nature - sky blue is difficult to mix, for instance: many of us take it for granted, and probably just as well, because that saves us tearing our hair out - and, especially, greens.  So many students of painting say they find greens a problem: you look at their palette, and invariably it contains Ultramarine - it's really hard to paint a Summer green with Ultramarine; so then they go to Pthalo Green, or less aggressive ones ideally, e.g. Sap Green, Viridian, Emerald, Oxide of Chromium, Cobalt Green.... the sheer expense implied there makes me come over all peculiar....  I knew someone who relied on one of the many Olive greens - her paintings made me feel quite ill.  There's nothing wrong with tubes of green paint, unless you're using them because you can't mix greens (actually, there IS something wrong with Olive green - it has no single definition, it so often contains a trace of black, and I don't know if there are any olives it resembles but it's all wrong for the British landscape). So - most of us aren't going to be led down the verdant garden path; but if we're trying to help beginners, which I've done quite often, I would steer them away from the useless colour wheel; leave it to their own judgement to assess warmth or coolness - most of us know perfectly well if a painting chills or warms - and suggest they invest in more blues than Ultramarine (though that's a great colour), because that will automatically give them cooler blues, and a tangy yellow like Lemon and a - shall we say "richer" instead of "warmer"?  Would that be of help? - a richer, rounder yellow like Cadmium in its several shades - plus, teach 'em about complementaries; and you don't need a wheel for that.  That's basic, easy (however many complications there might be around the edges of the subject) and that's my objective!  Break away from over-complex theories, find a system that works, and eventually it becomes second nature and you no longer have to waste time agonizing about it. 

Norette - I bet you do use orange; nearly all of us use either Burnt Sienna or other red-browns, and they are earth-orange; and can be darkened by Ultramarine - other blues make a deep green of them, which has its place.   Your green gallery is very useful: its only drawback would be failing to label it - but so long as you do that, you'll have a colour library for every occasion (I bet that even then, one day you'll encounter a green that catches you out: but if it works 99% of the time, which it should, I wouldn't worry).