Creative Prompts #2

Let’s go down the rabbit hole of colour mixing!

Oct 18, 2024

Welcome to my new series of monthly posts with creative prompts devoted to different topics, techniques and processes.

If you have been here for some time, you know that I am obsessed with mixing colours and creating various mixing charts!

This month’s creative prompts are all about the ways we can explore colour.

Colour mixing is in itself a great practice and you don’t necessarily have to have a lot of background knowledge on how colour works - you can play, have fun and learn from observation.

However, if you are interested in learning the fundamentals, I highly recommend to check out Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green by Michael Wilcox. I think it is a particularly useful and insightful book. His explanations might feel a little bit too scientific at first, but believe me, when you get through the first part of the book and get to the exercises everything falls into place. The book explains many nuances of colour mixing, such as existing biases in each colour and how they affect mixing results. The book helped me to mix colours more confidently and consciously.

This month’s prompts:

Create your own colour wheels using different options for primary colours to learn how this impacts the mixing results. Take this exercise further and choose any three colours (not necessarily primaries) to learn what you can mix from such a limited palette.
Create a colour chart mixing all your colours with each other. You’ll learn a lot about the mixing potential of your current palette.
Create a colour chart by mixing one colour from your palette with all the others. Thus, you’ll learn about the colour’s mixing potential and also create a harmonised palette.
Find colour and colour combinations you like in books or magazines. Experiment with mixing colours to match the reference.
Choose a specific colour you want to explore and experiment with all the ways you can mix or play with it. For example, if you want to explore green, you can create various mixes of yellows and blues. Also you can create colour mixes by playing with your green pigments (e.g., mix various colours with phthalo green and see what happens) or explore what happens when mixing a complementary colour into your greens (add various reds).

Use these simple prompts to learn more about colours, find colour inspiration around you, come up with new ideas for your art and improve your skills.

Thank you for reading and being here! Feel free to share these prompts with a creative friend. I’ll be happy to hear from you in the comments! What are your favourite ways to play with colour?