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Colour and I have always gotten along, but in the last few years I’ve found myself exploring it in new ways, prompted by a number of workshops, most notably with Colorado artist Jill Soukup. (Thank you, Jill!)

"Colour Play" 8" x 10" oil on canvas panel

This painting had a few versions before I decided on the final one.

Colour is the language of emotion and is one of the most powerful tools an artist has to set the mood of a work. The absence of colour can also be extremely powerful. Think of black & white film, photography, drawings – the mood is automatically set by powerful values. Adding colour will always take it in another direction. 

"The Colour of White" 10" x 8" oil on canvas panel.

White is the most apparent example of how light influences colour.

In painting, colour can be quite complex and not always easy to control. I’m not going to go deep into the reeds on this one, as the more you discuss colour, the more complicated it seems to be. A whole category of science is devoted to colour & light and serious art students (myself included) spent many classes on this topic, completing our own colour wheels, swatch samples and exercises to understand it more fully.

Obviously, you are never done with such a rich topic as this.

A colour wheel is perhaps the easiest way to get a handle on it, breaking it down into primary, secondary, and tertiary colours or hues. Values are the range of darks (shades) to lights (tints). The temperature of a colour can make a huge difference in a painting, as well as the chroma, or intensity of the hue – it addresses the saturation or purity of the colour. And the relationships of all of it throughout a composition can play a big part in the making of a successful painting. It’s probably easier to understand a diagram, so I dug up an ancient flyer from an old Grumbacher watercolour kit that is probably older than I am. There's tons of information available online, as well as illustrated examples of the Munsell Colour System. 

"Coyotes on the Rocks" acrylic on panel, using the Bateman palette (1982)

Using a limited palette is one of the best methods of simplifying to really learn about colour. I discovered Canadian wildlife painter Robert Bateman’s work in the early 1980’s and learned that he primarily used Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna & Burnt Umber. I spent my first decade learning how to paint using that palette before I took my first workshop with Bateman in 1987 at Canadore College. (Such a great teacher! I enjoyed it so much that I took a Masterclass with him again in 1991 in Colorado Springs). Another limited palette that has proven popular with many artists is the Zorn palette, favoured by Anders Zorn, a Swedish painter of the late 19th century.

"Puppy" oil on canvas panel, using the Zorn palette

(Yellow Ochre, Cad Red Medium (or Vermillion), Ivory Black plus White)

So when a fun challenge was presented by the American Academy of Equine Art (AAEA), I jumped in!

In the AAEA project, you were to choose any 3 colours plus white to complete a painting. I wanted a challenge, but I also wanted to be able to have enough of a range for the work to have power. My subject was Legend, a Percheron mare who is a Phoenyx Farm & Sanctuary rescue. She’s a big black draft horse, so I knew I wanted to have some cool blues & purples, but rather than using a purple itself (that would be extremely limiting, as purple is overpowering!), I chose three primaries that I don’t use on a regular basis. Prussian Blue (it leans towards green), Quinacridone Red (another cool primary) and Yellow Ochre, (somewhat warmish) with the cool white of Titanium.

"Legend" 8" x 10" oil on canvas panel

The result was a quiet piece that reflects the nature of the horse. There were several times when I felt limited; that I couldn’t get the exact colour that I wanted, but ultimately, I learned a lot about those specific hues. It forced me to really think about colour and how to express it.

The best way to really understand colour is to stay aware as you keep experimenting in your work. Colour has power!

If you get a chance, let me know in the comments if you have any favourite colour experiments that you found helpful. Thanks for reading!

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