From: "Judith Northwood" 

Date: Sat Jan 19, 2002 10:50 pm
Subject: RE: [mini-painter] Mixing paints to produce diffrent hues 

Greetings, Xavier -

It's true that mixing pigments is more complicated than it would seem to
be logically. Different pigments of blue behave differently with
different pigments of yellow, so the variables become extensive, and
leave me without an easy answer.

First, are you using the hobby paints at all in the mixtures? If so,
that's going to increase your frustration, because I'm betting very few
of them are pure pigment paints. As a general rule of thumb, avoid
mixing more than two pigments and white (the white to adjust value
(light-dark range)). Sometimes it works to add very small amounts to
adjust hue (position on the color wheel), but the more pigments that are
added, the better the chance of creating mud. Of course, if you want to
create a very neutral color, mixing varying amounts of all three primary
colors in some combination of pigments is one interesting way to do so,
but I don't think much of that is required with painting mini figs.

One of the biggest complications in mixing pigments is involved with
changing value (light-dark range), since adding another pigment, such as
white (or another high-value pigment) to lighten or black (or another
low-value pigment) to darken will reduce chroma (saturation/vividness).
That's why there are several different "cadmium yellows" or "arylide
yellows", for example.

Most classical painters dealt with this by using a technique called
"grisaille" (griz-EYE), which involves doing a monochromatic
underpainting to establish values, then glazing over it to add the color
- sometimes in extreme detail, sometimes just rough blocking out of
forms. That's roughly what I've been doing - using a choice of primer
color to set the overall value of the mini, then do basecoats to
establish the areas of variation, like a black primer coat to create a
"dark" figure, for example, then some unbleached titanium over areas
where skin shows to lighten the value there before I ever add my planned
color. I then lay in my local color, and add shading with the local
color mixed with black or umber. Highlighting is usually a true pigment
a bit lighter than my mass tone, or it might be the same pigment as the
local color with white and a bit of a transparent color similar in hue
to the first pigment. The use of that transparent color will increase
chroma to partially offset its loss from the introduction of white, but
it won't darken the white as much as an opaque color would.

No matter what brand of paints you're using, the best way to understand
their use in mixing is to make color charts on watercolor paper. There
are some "Pocket Palette" books out there, but they only use a limited
number of pigments in their examples and generally focus on watercolor
or oil - your pages would be specific to the exact paints you use, both
pigment and vehicle/binder (important because there are distinct
variations between how paints behave in the different binders used - oil
mixing gives different results from watercolor mixing and both vary from
acrylic mixing). Notes along with each page help, especially
proportions used if that varies from 1:1.

If you, like me, don't really want to take that kind of time away from
painting, then I'd suggest a book like this one:
Mix Your Own Acrylics by Mirza & Harris (ISBN 1560102241)

It was published by Walter Foster in 2000, so it shouldn't be too hard
to find. Most of the general 'how-to" books on acrylics contain at
least some info on mixing colors, but this book is dedicated to it.
Also, there are a huge number of references out there for oils and
watercolors - they might provide a groundwork, but, like I said, the
results won't be as precise as the reference specifically on acrylics.

I'd be happy to give you a brief overview of the mixing properties of
some of the most typical artist pigments and describe what I use in my
oils. I won't know how to apply this to the hobby paints, though, since
I don't know what pigments are used in which paints, but LMK if you're
interested, and I'll type it up for you.

I hope all of that made sense - anyone, please feel free to ask for
clarification anywhere I lost you.

:^)

Judith