Color Temperature

         

               Warm Colors                                                                        Cool Colors

It is important to know that there are three "temperatures" of color, warm, cool, and neutral.  The neutral colors cover a very small band and are of little consequence, the warm and cools are a different matter.

My palette is arranged with warm colors on one side and the cool colors on the other.  Black, a neutral color, is obtained by mixing two dark colors - generally a blue and a brown - rather than using Ivory black or Payne's Gray..  This is because, when I paint, I don't think of a particular color, but only of warm and cool. 

My painting plan is to pit warm against cool whenever possible for contrast, and to vary the warms and the cools for variety.   That is, if my cool was a blue with a little green in it in one area, then I'll use the blue with a little violet in it nearby, or even violet.  Similarly, if the warm is yellow in one spot, I'll use a brown, or red or orange near it. The result is a more interesting (contrast) and entertaining (variety) painting. 

Spend a little time experimenting with color combinations and see what you get. There is no magic to any color; they are all cousin's of the original ten and you can identify them with just a little comparison test. If it looks like a green, that's what it is.  Is it a yellow-green, a blue-green, or close to the middle?  Your eyes will tell you all you need to know to match the color with the palette.  

Any color in "nature" is either in your palette or you can mix it form what's there. The warm colors are those we associate  with warmth, the colors of earth and fire:  red, orange, yellow, and brown, and mixtures thereof.  The cool colors are blue and violet and anything with blue in it.  This is easy to understand; we're used to cool blue skies and large bodies of cool blue water. That leaves red-purple and green, which are neutral colors; they are neither warm or cool. The minute we put a little more red in red-purple it becomes warm, or if we mix in blue instead, it becomes cool. A little yellow in green makes it warm, just as blue will make it a cool green. We rarely deal with a dead center red-purple or green; they are usually color biased toward warm or cool