Colour swatches

A few years ago when I did a painting class in St Ives, the tutor suggested that we try mixing our colours up to see what they actually produced, as cool yellows with cool blues give you a different shade of green than warm yellows with a warm blue. I took it one step further and decided to try and mix almost all the colours in my paint palette to see what I would get. This resulted in the swatch above, which I still have to this day, albeit slightly faded and is stuck up on my side unit.

Accomplished artists know exactly what colours work and what ones don't but sometimes I think even the best can forget just how well two colours mixed together can produce one great colour. It's also great to see which pigments granulate and which ones don't as it can be cool to let paints do their own thing on the paper.

I don't know about you but I tend to keep my watercolours laid out in the same location in my paint box, so in order to help me pick just the right shade, I painted a bit of each colour onto some watercolour paper and stuck it up on the wall above my art desk. Even though I have been using these colours for years, I still find it useful to cast my mind over the colours to make sure I pick the right one if I am looking for a particular shade.

Last Christmas I was given a wonderful gouache paint box with the most beautiful vibrant colours in it so I am now getting used to different colours and how adding white affects them. I decided to do the same exercise with these paints to help me. I love how you can see the effect of adding white (it's the smaller line above each colour).

It's well worth experimenting if you haven't already.

Happy Thursday xx

Alan Oliver

I've been going through old issues of my painting magazines so that I can add the pictures I find inspirational into my scrapbook and then discard the magazine. I used to keep them.....all of them, every single one......and all I ended up with was a pile gathering dust that I never looked at again. So the scrapbook is a much better idea. It's also really interesting to look at the pattern that emerges.....it really helps define your style.

Anyway I digress. In the October 2010 issue of The Leisure Painter magazine there was an article on Alan Oliver and his use of gouache. Perfect timing to go through this magazine as I have just received a lovely gouache paint box. So I read on in earnest.

I must say I really liked Alan's style. I loved his loose expressive brush strokes and his use of colour. He paints mainly on mount board and he suggested for anyone who would like to try this to visit their local framers to see if they could purchase any scrap mount board - some even give it for free.


The colours in the painting above are wonderful - I just love the lilacs and blues against the white.

I am struggling to find a favourite painting and the one above and below are on par with each other. I love the abstract look to the above snowscape, how Alan scraped the paint on and off the board to get the desired effect. Again I love the lilacs....but then again for some reason I am always drawn to paintings with this colour in it.

The painting below is called Thatched Cottage and Alan has used Indian Ink to draw in the dark shapes. I love the way the paint has merged into each other to create this beautiful soft effect. I am seriously in awe of these two paintings.

I will definitely be adding these to my scrapbook and I really couldn't recommend creating one of these for yourself. Very inspiring.

If you want to find out more about Alan, then please check out his website.

Hope you are all having a good Tuesday :o) xx