Tery Mieura's Notes on Color

A sunny day in Michigan and a good day to do some plein air painting-this afternoon which is a good reason to review some of Terry's color notes.
Going along with the color is his mantra of do not copy value but organize your values-so you have 3-5 in a painting and ave large connecting areas of the same value. Also if you tend to paint to dark-as a reminder use a white canvas , and if you paint to light-use a mid toned canvas
Paint colors he uses are:Titanium white, cad re light or medium,alizarin, Transparent red earth (or transparent oxide red  referred to by some artists as TOR, cad. lemon, cad yellow deep, yellow ochre . The yellow ochre should be mid value not a dark one. These vary from paint company to paint company. he uses a lot of Gamblin paints as do I.

These paint mixes are general, of course, the daylight circumstances  may call for the colors to be tweaked.

 Remember-color hue gives you the direction of the color only

1. To lay in darks-he uses ultra marine blue, and TOR. This makes for cleaner more  intense  transparent dark and you want your darks thin and transparent. I also added Alizarin to the mix by  mistake (see why you always need to put your paint in the exact spot on your palette?) and it worked okay but had a more purplish hue.

2. To paint a road he starts with-TOR, grey and white. You can mix your grey with complements or black and white.

3. Dark green-Cad Lemon,Cad Red and either Uultra Marine Blue or black

4. Warm green- Ochre, black or Ultra Marine Blue and just a tad of Cad Red

5. Mid green-add more yellow to cool the green . If you just add white to change the dark green to a mid green it could get too chalky-so add the yellow first then a little white if you still need to lighten.

6. The color of the sky is relative to colors around it-add a little of the environments colors into the sky

7. White in sunlight is the color of "vanilla ice cream"-so if you need to go have a cone to get that down-go right ahead. He makes it with - Titanium White, a touch of Cad Lemon and adds a little Ultra Marine  Blue  to grey it down . Not too much of either or you'll have a pale green instead  (anyone for mint choc chip ice cream without the chips?)

8. Do muted colors last -you can't get them down without some context.

9. For a green color in foreground, midground and background-he mixed his foreground color first, adds blue for the midground so it moves further back,and then just a tad more blue and white to move it even further  back . He makes the three piles at one time.

10. Brightest green -Cad Lemon and Cerulean Blue

11. Do not let under colors mix with top colors you will get MUD

12. Make sure your color is right on your palette -spend as much time as you need getting it right-you can't change it /alter it once it's on  the canvas-it'll be wrong or you will have to scrape it off.Ask yourself-what is the hue-then is my puddle  cooler, warmer, darker, lighter etc.  I had a yellow that was the right color family  but it was too bright and did not recede-I had to add the complement to grey it down(which was a grey from Ultra marine Blue and Alizarin). Terry  mixes his grey first- he gets the value right with his grey then adds the color to it. Much easier than trying to grey down the color and then trying to adjust the value .And you waste less paint.