Using Blue in Your Next Painting
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Using Blue in Your Next Painting
I absolutely love using blue in my paintings, and it is one of my favorites to be sure. I find that students are sometimes befuddled by blue and cannot figure out if the blues they are using are warm or cool. They also struggle sometimes using the right blue to mix greens and violets.
I use only 3 blues (sometimes 4), and the ones I use are made by all paint manufacturers - that is why I always recommend these 3 blues to my students: Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue and Cerulean Blue. These colors are flexible, easy to use, easy to mix and each has particular properties that make them useful for a variety of applications.
For some reason students gravitate toward Pthahlo Blue, rather than the more traditional colors that I use. Pthahlo Blue is very bright, staining and hard to manage for the best painters. It can be a nightmare for students to use because it is simply too bright out of the tube. I find it needs heavy modification to make it useable, thus I don’t use it.
Let’s take a look at the properties of the 3 blues that I use. First is Ultramarine Blue. Ultramarine Blue is a warm blue - really the only warm blue, except maybe for Indigo, which can easily be made with Ultramarine and Black. Ultramarine is warm because it contains red - the red warms the blue. That’s the reason Ultramarine Blue is the best to make violet - it already has red in it (blue and red make violet). Ultramarine Blue has a high tinting strength (holds its color when white is added). For some reason many students confuse this blue with cool blue.
Next is Cobalt Blue (I use Cobalt Blue Hue because it doesn’t contain the heavy metal Cobalt). Cobalt Blue is unique in that it isn’t warm or cool, but rather neutral like a primary blue. Some manufacturers actually make a primary blue, but I prefer Cobalt Blue. Because it’s neither warm or cool it works great for mixing both violet and green. It is a very flexible color that can be used in any painting and retains its color when tinted.
Last is Cerulean Blue. Cerulean Blue is a cool blue - one of many cool blues (think Phtahlo, Manganese, Payne’s Gray, Cyan, Prussian, etc.). I find Cerulean Blue to be the most flexible cool blue. It isn’t too bright, has a high tinting strength and makes great cool greens when mixed with cool yellow. Cerulean Blue is cool because it contains green - that’s why it works so well to make green.
When you’re selecting blues to use in your regular palette, try to get a warm, neutral (primary) and cool version. This will provide a full range of blue for any painting application that you will encounter.
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David
Simple Color System Colorwheel
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