| Author | Message | ||
  John Preston |
Thank you, Bruce. As usual the most articulate, if not final, word on the subject. The "mud challenge" is enlightening: everybody try it. Also, in reference to your other thread, thanks for Quinacridone Gold info. Maybe it's time to stock up! | ||
drollere |
oh, the *mud* topic. i'm sorry i didn't get here sooner. as far as i can tell, i am pretty unusual among watercolorists in that i believe (1) "mud" does not exist in painting, and (2) if it does exist, it has little to do with the way colors are mixed. the chief cause of "mud" is *overworking* a particular passage while still wet -- it's a bad habit in brushwork, not in color mixing. the reason this occurs is that repeated brushing dissolves and lifts the sizing in the paper, so the pigment penetrates deep into the paper nooks and crannies, and this radically dulls the color -- any color -- making it look scabby. the solution is to *lay the color down in one pass and leave it alone*. even charging a wet passage with more color has to be done carefully. you can always glaze over the passage with a different color after the previous layer has dried. but *never* fuss with paint once it is on the page. yes, this makes watercolors even riskier and harder than they already are as for the color mixing side, here is my "mud challenge": set out your complete palette of paints, mix up a small puddle of any two paints, and paint a healthy stroke of the color on a large watercolor sheet. now add a third paint to the puddle, mix thoroughly, and paint a stroke. now add a fourth paint, and a fifth, with more water as needed ... keep going until you have used *every* paint on your palette -- then keep adding different paints to the mixture, to shift the hue or color temperature, until you've filled the sheet. be sure you try all those mixing combinations that are forbidden in jim kosvanec's book -- like cadmiums with phthalos. and throw some black paint in there, too. when it has completely dried, study the sheet. you'll see some surprisingly subtle, indescribable or complex colors, but they will all have that unique watercolor glow. *you won't see mud.* at the graduate level, there are important pigment harmonies to keep in mind. greens mixed with cobalt green and yellow ochre will look whitish and dull next to warms mixed with transparent quinacridones. but next to warms mixed with iron oxide pigments, they look just fine. another graduate point: extremely dark pigments, such as carbon black, prussian blue, indanthrone blue or dioxazine violet undergo very large color shifts when they dry -- they lose chroma and lighten in value. compared to how they looked when put on the page, they can seem like "mud" when they have dried. the problem is either to mix a black that holds its dark tone (a "synthetic black" mixed with phthalo green, indanthrone blue and quinacridone scarlet works very well), or to layer the blacks in glazes to build up the dark value gradually. once you learn and can adjust for these color shifts, and harmonize the finished quality of the color through the right selection of pigment families for the same painting, and most importantly *don't fuss* with your painting, the "mud effect" largely disappears. on handprint, see the section on "painting in neutrals," "watercolor drying shifts," and "dilution, value and chroma" ... all listed in the "site map." | ||
Mike Scott |
Frank, if you wouldn't mind, will you go to the Artist Chat section of this board, to Posting Artwork. I have a couple paintings which I posted. I'd really appreciate a critique. Thanks. | ||
Mike Scott |
Yeah, Frank, I learned about handprint from this discussion board. I'm a relative beginner in watercolor, so I just keep reading and learning from that site. It has really helped me to understand all different aspects of watercolor and my work has improved markedly because of it, and due to the generosity of the artists on this discussion board. The sections on color and paints have been the most helpful to me. Right now I'm experimenting with variations on the secondary palette. Read the Intro to the handprint site. As others have said, Bruce is a very talented and generous man. Thanks. | ||
shelfran |
Mike, When I saw you bandying about all those Pigment numbers,I went racing over to handprint.com to see what was up. That is the most fabulous website I've ever seen. They get into almost all the color systems from Maxwell's Triad thru Munsell and CIE right up to CMYK and RGB with beautiful supporting graphics. How did they get all that proprietary information on pigments? Who sponsors them and what's more important, who pays for it? As you can probably guess, I never wandered out of the color section. Frank | ||
shelfran |
The 2 color surfscape was done on a 1/4 sheet of 140# Canson on the wrong side. I don't like hot pressed paper because it's almost water proof if you don't wash it down ahead of time. But the back side of this Cold pressed was much smoother than the front, but not as smooth as hot pressed. The painting was mostly wet in wet with a lot of lifting out. First things in were the foam shapes in plain water. Than the surrounding darks with frantic efforts to mop up the invading dark color. Always make sure your dark colors are significantly darker then the lighter color or you'll get nasty balloons. Frank | ||
Mike Scott |
That's impressive, Frank! I've used Prussian blue and Burnt Sienna together in this way before, but with results not as good as yours. You were able to achieve rich darks and it actually does look as though there is granulation in some areas. I feel like John that some of the "low strength" colors, such as Cobalt blue, are easier to control in mixes, etc... I was just at handprint.com site reading the Secondary Palette section: hansa yellow (PY97), cadmium red orange (PR108), quinacridone rose (PV19), ultramarine blue (PB29), phthalocyanine cyan (PB17), phthalocyanine green YS (PG36). I am going to try this one. There are some interesting comments re: mud there, too. | ||
John Preston |
Very impressive, Frank. The mood of that palette is wonderful.It actually appears quite granular for two staining pigments. Is this about a half sheet? Never tried these two in watercolor but have found viridian and alizarin indispensible in oils. Like cobalt, I tend to favor low strength colors such as viridian as they're easier to control in mixes.Gonna try those two colors today. Glad we've got you on this board! | ||
shelfran |
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shelfran |
\image(surf2c.jpg) Here 1s the 2 color surfscape | ||
shelfran |
I'm going to try and post the 2 color surfscape using only Quinacridone Red and Phthalo Green \image surf2c.jpg | ||
shelfran |
Mike and John other users of Cobalt Blue... I'm embarrased to say I've never used Cobalt blue in a watercolor for the following reasons: It's a relatively weak pigment. It's not completely transparent and it's a "true blue"; I usually prefer blues on the greenish side (Phthalo) or the red side (ultramarine). But I'm going to give cobalt blue a whirl as one component in a triad. At least it won't stain! One thing I hate about phthalo blue; if you're not careful, it can poison your entire painting. We've talked about color triads; Has anyone explored the possibilties of 2 color palettes. A real exciting 2 color combo is quinacridone red and phthalo green. I would have my students use this 2 color palette to show them how to do an unbelievable range of shades and hues of grays. I them had them do a surfscape where the fore ground was the blue green ocean. The surf was shades of white, the wet sand blue grey, the dry sand shades of pale sienna, and the sky was a pale blue grey. This is one I'll have to make and show you, although you'll swear I cheated. Cheers, Frank | ||
Mike Scott |
I really like your painting, Frank. What Dake said about mixing on the paper makes good sense. I have also tried his advice on mixing the umbers and blues with great results(mixing on the paper). Been able to make some nice clean darks by mixing Quinacridone red or violet with Viridian, also. I agree with what John said about using Cobalt blue in place of Phthalo blue for the primary palette; before I used Cobalt blue in more diluted washes I didn't really think of it as a transparent pigment, but, as with most pigments it seems to be a matter of adding the right amout of water and mixing in such a way as to avoid "mud". As I found from my experiment painting with actual mud(Yankee Umber), probably any pigment can be used in a painting and still allow one to avoid muddy results. A lot of dark values in my older paintings have a sort of "chalky" dead look. This seems to be a matter of overworking for me, because I still use the same pigments, but with good results. Anyway, just my opinion, Frank. I'm struggling to understand the whole idea and practice of color mixing. Glad you started this thread, and like your painting. Post more! | ||
John Preston |
Frank, very nice! On my monitor the post is about 5x7 and looks fine. I'm guessing your definition of MUD is not being able to see paper through paint, thus any pigment with a large particle size that settles on the surface of the paper will appear muddy even if it's hue, temperature, saturation and value are correct. To me,MUD is when one of those attributes is compromised, causing the area to sit in another space than the rest of the image. Hence, your picture looks fine on my screen. You, however, can see the physical quality of the pigment on the paper, and I'm guessing that you feel the the more opaque passages physically sit in a different space than other parts of the image. | ||
Dake |
Well on my screen the background just appears dark with not enough resolution to see the mud. If you mix hookers green with an earth colour you're most likely to get something like mud. Hookers green is a dodgy colour to mix with anything, pthalo green can be mixed with primaries but as green is a secondary colour it really should stay clear of blending with anything but primaries. Transparent or semi transparent blues eg ultramarine and cobalt when mixed with either of the umbers especially raw make lush warm to cool greens,(cobalt tollerates less mixing though) for cooler areas use indigo for your blue, it's stronger but less harsh than the pthalos or prussian blue. Foliage in general and where a strong value is concerned you get a more interesting and exciting result by allowing the pigments to mix on the paper. You should be able to see reminants of each individual colour in the wash when it dries.This is one of the best ways to avoid mud. I have stayed mud free(unless i want it)by using this approach. It has nothing to do with the pigments. | ||
shelfran |
I had to to use Internet Explorer to upload the image. The upper background is the boat picture is Hookers Green. Burnt Siena, and earth colors and is what I call muddy. Actually the image looks better than the real painting; Probably the CMY graphics (grin) Frank | ||
shelfran |
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shelfran |
/image ryc.jpg | ||
shelfran |
\image ryc.jpg | ||
shelfran |
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shelfran |
Dake & Sutureself, I almost made it. My image is JPG but when I was prompted fo browse for an image my only format choice was html!! Frank | ||
shelfran |
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John Preston |
Frank, I tried the trio with the Hansa you recommended, MUCH better, espescially when I substituted the less powerful Cobalt for Thalo. Got likable approximations of Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre. I kinda like this trio. With the addition of an actual black (or Paynes Grey or Indigo)one could go quite dark. I'll bet Cobalt, Rose Madder Genuine and Aureolin would give similar mixes with some granulation and lifting ability( I hear you groaning, Bruce). I'm gonna try this as an "absolute minimun-just a pencil-sketchbook and 3 pans in my pocket-travel rig". | ||
Mike Scott |
Frank, I also played around a bit with the limited palette you'd mentioned, but I added Viridian(PG18). I used Daniel Smith Hansa Yellow Medium. The other paints are from M. Graham. This is a very intense and transparent palette. Nice for glazes. Personally, I prefer Cobalt blue and Ultramarine blue to Phthalo blue, but I see how this would be a good palette to use for teaching. Had to lock-up my Burnt Sienna, though; kept reaching for it. Thanks. | ||
dake |
Where suture has "image description"...make that the name of the file eg "mud.jpg" | ||
SutureSelf |
Frank, you're almost there. Start with a backslash, then the word "image", then open curly bracket, then a description of the image, then close curly bracket, like this: \image{image description}. Then, when you click on "Preview/Post Message", you'll see a box that says "your image here" and a browse prompt. Click on browse and find the file your image is in. Click post and you're in. Good luck. | ||
Dake |
ignore the round brackets(/)(image)({"your file name"}) | ||
shelfran |
image{RYCDdt.jpg} | ||
shelfran |
image{muddy painting} | ||
shelfran |
If someone will tell me how to post images, I'll show you one of my "muddy" paintings, before CMY. Cheers, Frank | ||
Mike Scott |
Burnt Pilbarra. Yankee Umber. Pigeon Poo White. Cheap Joe, let's make a deal here! A new Purist Palette complete with Mud Mucker Brushes. John and Dake, forgive me. I've had a long week. | ||
Dake |
Jeez Mike, did you put NY mud on your dragons tongue.....thats REAL fella. I love that mud action! I'll send you some Pilbarra iron oxide, "burnt sienna" from straight off the ground if you send me some of that cool lookin yankeee umber. Now we're onto some purist notion here. I can see the new society now...."The Plein air Mudpuddlers Club"...a haven for paranoid post apocalyptic painters " You must use soil or some found organic stuff and paint outdoors in the raw. Now this reminds me of the pigeon poo debate from a year ago...it makes a great opaque white but acidity is a problem. Of course there's some great art out there that has exsisted for a millenium or more painted with these very materials(except the bird poo...then again) and Arches was just not there. This landscape of yours is a beaut. Oh yeah Mike on things becoming "second nature"; I have found that bad habits become second nature first. Unyru...the prisoner that was seeing the stars had been banging his head on the wall. Yes...I'm an optimist. | ||
John Preston |
Mike, that is TOO cool! Frankly, there are some down right transparent passages in that picture. I say do more, REAL LARGE, and take 'em down to NYC! | ||
Mike Scott |
 I suggest we embrace mud as a worthy pigment. Western NY mud, as I've found out, offers generous granulation and can be used as a wash. I had difficulty in achieving the darkest values, however, and I have ruined my fine kolinsky brushes. Perhaps a finer or sifted mud pigment would be more practical. Dake, can you send me some of that nice reddish soil that is found in parts of Australia? Frank, I do prefer your palette suggestions, but I could not resist the concept of painting with mud. (big grin) | ||
Mike Scott |
John, just one word: gouache. (I have a secret stash). Seriously, I agree that it comes down to preference. I am biased toward umbers, siennas and the like, but I have not found a pigment I don't like, yet. | ||
Mike Scott |
I painted many muddy messes in the past. It was due to a lack of planning and thinking about how I was going to execute the painting. This almost always led me to overwork and thus kill any vibrancy and transparency. Definitely muddy thinking. Kukana, after painting for many years, one must get the feel for painting and not have to think much about the process, but in the absence of that gift, clear planning and thinking through the painting process have helped me greatly. How long does it take before this stuff becomes second nature?(grin) | ||
John Preston |
Frank, Yes, I was using the cooler PY3 rather than the PY97 Hansa. It looked more like the yellow on registration squares of commercially printed items. Still, there's another angle to this topic that fascinates me. On the whole, I'm more in Kukana's camp: who cares as long as you're getting the color you want? Are you sure you don't have a personal bias against opaque pigments? (there's no wrong answer here, it's about preference) I still think watercolorists in general have been conditioned to favor transparency and high saturation. About two months ago I saw a Sargent exhibit in St. Louis... there were Siennas, Ochres and Umbers everywhere. There was BLACK!!!GASP!!! There was Chinese White SO THICK IT HAD CRACKED!!! Poor guy, nobody must have told him. | ||
unyru |
Muddies, non-muddies: Change of pace, old quote edited for today; Two jailed artists Looked thru the same bars One saw the mud One saw the stars. Wonder if they ever got to paint what they saw? | ||
jandrle |
The cmyk range is the narrowest... making many colors hard to mix. I get confused with soft versus mud, too. What makes a painting "pop"? Not just lack of mud... Jane | ||
shelfran |
John, I read with interest your experiments with CMY and I think I can explain your difficulty in getting a rich orange and having olive hues in your browns. I should have elaborated in my first post;I cited my Y component as Hansa Yellow by Daniel Smith. Many Hansa yellows are pale and lemon colored. Daniel Smith Hansa Yellow I would rate as close to true yellow (neither lemon nor orange). I can see where a lemon yellow could have given the results you described. Anyway thanks for giving it a whirl. Maybe your difficulty in matching yellow ochre, means that yellow ochre is "mud" (grin). Frank | ||
Kukana |
I am finding this thread very intersting and enlightening. I love the diversity this board has. Jeanne Dobie Book has some interesting things to say about mud. On achieveing different temp. of color and greying color. Is that we're talking about here or are we seriously talking about mixing a big slury of a mess on the pallette for the heck of it. All color seems to have it place in both nature and art. I personally stay away from Hookers and Sap green because, ..I don't know, ..I don't like the temp they give my work and yet who likes bright colors more than me?? There are other colors I use strictly because they give me the depth I need to achieve darkness. I was painting on location this weekend at a show and someone asked me how I knew to mix those certain colors to get a shade of blackish grey I wanted. Up to that moment, I didn't even know I was doing it. When I stopped to think, I forgot the formula. It becomes second nature, and I just do it! SO my Question is, ..IS it really ncessarry to know what Im doing, as long as I know how to do it. Is working off pure instinct a bad thing. For me, thinking too hard on this subject confuses me. I do not consider myself a hit and miss artist. I can paint and produce lovely work but my formal education in art and chemisty leave volumes to be desired. Does anyone else approach art like I do??? | ||
Kukana |
And to think, I just pick up my brush and paint and it all works out groovey. Does that mean Im operating on dumb luck or do I subconsciencouly know the difference an not mix mud. By the way, wasn't Joe going to make us a pigment called Mississippi Mudd so we wouldn't have to mix it anymore!!! All kidding aside, sometimes I like to 'muddy" an area so as to create contrast to a clear, crisp area...All things must have their opposites...or am I missing the point here??? | ||
John Preston |
Since I had all 3 colors Frank suggested, I experimented with mixtures. It's not a bad palette as trios go, but like all trios there were some gaps. A deep,rich green is hard to get ( this is a palette for light and medium values) and it's hard to approximate yellow ochre or burnt sienna. Any brown had an olive bias. The best orange I could get would be in one ring on the color wheel( I mixed, glazing might do better). Zero granulation or textural effects and no lifting, but I can see where this would be a good beginner palette for people with no color mixing experience. But I would want to move on to other pigments once they got the idea. | ||
shelfran |
Hi Guys, Let me rephrase my entire first post. I was teaching an adult education class in beginner's water colors. In addition to the usual beginner pitfalls like balloons and backwashes and in many cases the inability to draw, the colors were dead and scratchy and sometimes even opaque. The pallette I had them using at that time was: phthalo blue, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, burnt siena, yellow ochre,Hookers green and Paynes grey. To teach them how to mix colors and match shades I then limited them too 3 colors; Phthalo blue, Quinacridone violet and Hansa yellow. While the drawing didn't improve, they were finally learning to match colors and what is more, there was no longer any danger of mistaking their colors for gouache;these were transparent watercolors!!! They glowed! As Joe Friday would say "..only the facts ma'am... Cheers, Frank | ||
Dake |
Yeah yeah i know about CMY Suture, no i meant "Da vinci" and "Daniel Smith".... not that Frank was being too prescriptive. Hey Frank, keep the info and your experience coming, it sitmulates good chatter. | ||
SutureSelf |
Dake, in defense of Frank, CMY isn't a brand name (if that's what you were referring to.) It's the process-color triad of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. I was a chromist/lithographer for sixteen years and know those colors well. Yeah, it was my story - "Why Pastels Is Bettern Water Color." Thanks for remembering. | ||
Dake |
Now that Lizard Crimson tale, It was yours wasn't it Jerry?..or was it John's..? I went back trying to find it again,but couldn't seem to locate it. It was so funny! | ||
Dake |
Dear Mr Sheldon, I just can't get the idea here, and most probably Jerry says it all(again....did you see his "Lizard Crimson" story), but I digress. I just wanted to add that any "chemical" representation of color is "muddy". Color is an abstract(if it's not abstract try describing it to a blind person), subjective description of a SENSATION caused by light as we know it stimulating our optic nerve and being processed in the occipital region of our brain. Somewhere in our little heads we store comparisons of clean and muddy, and we don't get those comparisons from the local store but by experience. So muddy don't exist in nature...if i were sitting in judgement on this case I find in favor of the assirtion that "muddy thinking" makes mud. And whats more you quote brand names in being more likely not to produce mud, are you kiddin me? | ||
SutureSelf |
Okay, Frank, now we’re getting somewhere. The most telling remark of your two posts was “Now I realize that a skilled painter can probably make a ‘mudfree’ painting using real mud off the ground, but that's beside the point.” It may be beside the point to a pigment chemist, but it is precisely the point to an artist. To an artist – and to the viewer of art – “mud” is strictly a visual/perceptual phenomenon, and it is in this context that I define it. You seem to have defined “mud” entirely outside the context of art and therefore your definition has little utility to an artist. In the first sentence of your second post, you declare that a color can be “unuseabley [sic] muddy.” In the final sentence you concede that “a skilled painter can probably make a "mudfree" painting using real mud…” This is clearly a contradiction. After all, if real mud is usable, how can a color mixed from artists’ pigments be unusable? Regarding running a spectra-photometric curve on the colors, imagine recording the voices of, say, Charlotte Church and Louis Armstrong or the sounds of a glass harmonica and Junior Walker’s saxophone. I imagine that performing a Fourier analysis on these wave functions would show more roughness in Satchmo than in Charlotte, but I don’t need to do that; I have ears. Similarly, your analysis of the colors may have told you something technical about them, but an artist doesn’t need that information; he has eyes. You assert that “tertiary colors are easier to muddy than primary colors,” but you offer no support for the assertion. Let’s say I have the primary color red and want to "muddy" it. I can mix in a little blue-green. Blue-green, of course is a tertiary color. If I have blue-green and want to "muddy" it, I can mix in a little red. Why is one of those processes easier than the other? Finally, there is a certain circularity to your reasoning. You prepared a series of washes which you rated according to your idea of muddiness. You then examined them spectra-photometrically, saw that they were, by golly, different from the colors you rated as non-muddy and then defined that difference as evidence of muddiness. If I define a fish as muddy and a salamander as non-muddy and I then analyze their respective DNAs, I will find their DNAs to be different. I can’t, then, logically use the difference to support the fish’s muddiness vis-à-vis the salamander. I realize that in the case of the colors the difference involved the relative “roughness” and “smoothness” of the function curves and that this holds a kind of intuitive seductiveness. Nonetheless, you defined these qualities ex-post-facto as evidence of muddiness. To conclude, I think that the way an artist perceives muddiness if of little utility to a pigment chemist and vice-versa. Respectfully, Jerry Fried | ||
feather |
shelfran: It's great to have someone with your experience around on this board! I hope that you share more of your knowledge with us! John, Dake, and SutureSelf, thanks for your imput too! I'm totally clueless on this subject of mud, and all input is a learning experience for me. | ||
John Preston |
I agree with Dake and Suture... I've noticed among artists there's a bias toward saturated, transparent primary and secondary colors and against neutrals or any kind of opacity. As if such colors were morally "muddy". The tip off as to why this is comes from your source idea, ironically: CMYK color reproduction. We're in a culture that knows and relates to it's world more from printed or electronic sources than actual observation.At work our face is in a monitor and at home it's TV or magazines. The volume of media favors maximum saturation color to get attention and cut through. When you take time to look at reality, it's 99% neutral colors. We've been seduced by a chromatic sales pitch and stigmatized a wide range of truly beautiful but quiet colors. | ||
shelfran |
I realize that mud is subjective and also that it is relative but there are still certain things that make a color unuseabley muddy. White (except with blue) always makes a chalky color. Tertiary colors are easier to muddy than primary colors. Before retireing, I was a pigment chemist and prepared a series of w/c washes which I rated as muddy and a series which I rated as pure or clean. I also compared the muddiest muddy color with a hue match of the muddy color using CMY. On running a spectraphotometric curve on both washes, the CMY mix had smooth rounded peaks and valleys. The muddy wash had ragged spikey peaks almost like visual "noise". Although I'm sure I haven't tried every possible combination of CMY mixes, I'm tempted to challenge you to even try and get mud with CMY. Now I realize that a skilled painter can probably make a "mudfree" painting using real mud off the ground, but that's beside the point. Cheers, Frank | ||
Dake |
May I add my agreeance to Jerry's comments."Mud" is a subjective term. It can be found in abundance in many masterpieces..... if you choose isolate certain areas of the piece. One tasty well placed stroke of colour can turn "mud" into crystal. Just as overblending can turn the cleanest combinations into mud. | ||
SutureSelf |
Frank, with due respect, I disagree with your theory of "mud's" source. In my experience, "mud" comes from two sources. The first is confusing color temperatures. When you make an area in a painting warm and then decide it should be cool and then change your mind again, the colors tend to neutralize themselves and mud is the result. The second is overblending. The more two colors are blended, the less individual identity each color has. "Mud" is a failure of color identity. At those times when you'll want a cool passage in a warm area or vice versa, keep your strokes clean and deft, not allowing the warm and the cool to neutralize one another. Any color that can possibly be mixed - no matter how many component colors it comprises - can be read as a "clean" or "correct" color if its context is appropriate. "Mud" isn't the result of muddy colors; it is the result of muddy thinking. Thanks for listening. Jerry Fried | ||
Frank Sheldon |
Mud is the effect of too many colors in a wash which creates mud. If the mud colors are high value (white), the color appears chalky. If the mud colors are low value (black) the color appears dead. One of the color systems that a waterbased inkjet printer uses is CMYK or Cyan, Magenta and Yellow and Black. If you can forget black and find very close color matches for C, M and Y, you will have a bullet proof set of primaries that will never develop "mud". The colors I use are the greenest shade of phthalo blue for cyan. Davincis deep rose (quinacridone violet)for magenta and Daniel Smith's Hansa Yellow for the yellow. Try it you might like it. |
