TIP: Color Charts - Whys, wherefores, and how-tos.

You might think that painting color charts is merely a boring art school exercise. Okay, so the boring part might be correct, but color charts are an invaluable tool in an artist’s arsenal, and here’s why.

When you need to mix a particular color, what do you do? If you’ve been painting long enough, and with the same palette, you probably know your colors pretty well (either by a long period of trial and error, or by doing color charts…). If you’re a beginning painter, how are you supposed to know what tubes to reach for, to mix that target color?

You got it - Color Charts.

There are several different kinds of color charts (’m getting tired of typing “color charts” - I’m going to refer to them from now on as “CC”).

1 - Single hue (color) charts that explore the entire range of value (light and dark) and chroma (intensity of color).  The preeminent example of this would be the Munsell notation system.

Page from Munsell book of color

2 - Multiple hue CC based on one main color, but mixed with EVERY OTHER COLOR in your palette. Richard Schmid has a perfect example of this sort in his book Alla Prima - Everything I Know About Painting

Page from Alla Prima showing 6 of 12 color charts

By the way - Richard Schmid didn’t find painting CC to be boring - here’s what he says about them in his book:

“When I finished I knew more about my paint than I had ever thought possible. It was an astonishing experience—imagine being taken into the kitchen of a great chef and shown everything he could do with flavors—that was what it was like for me! There was nothing tedious or boring about doing the charts; each was a revelation of the power that awaited me…”

3 - Every color on your palette CC - a visual documentation of what ya got in your paint box. Here’s a great example from my friend Lori Kiergaard. Every time she adds a new color to her palette, she also adds a paint swatch to the chart. (She also framed the whole thing - so it looks good on her studio wall.)

Lori's paint swatch color chart

Sometimes the exploration of color can lead you into directions you never though possible. Our talented friend Jim Harris has taken his Munsell color exploration to awesome levels - Here’s an example of what he’s doing - Jim is the ultimate color dude! I just love his work. By the way - this painting is available!

Illuminated I - Jim Harris

So how do you go about making CC?

From Richard Schmid’s book Alla Prima: Everything I know About Painting:

This is a scan of the Cad Yellow Pale chart.

1. Top row across each chart is pigment as it comes from the tube. The vertical columns are those same pigments or mixtures with white added in increasing amounts, like a little value scale for each color.

2. Bottom row should be just off white, as light as possible while still being an identifiable color.

3. Middle row should be the value halfway between top and bottom rows and will vary depending on how dark or light the color is.

4. Second and fourth rows should be halfway between the rows above/below them.

5. First column (vertically) is each pigment straight from the tube and then lightened down to make 5 values. The first row is that color mixed with each palette color with the main color predominating, then lightened with white down to five values. Continue with a new chart for each of the palette colors.

You can tape off squares, and use a palette knife to mix the colors on the palette, then transfer them with the knife to the taped-off square. That way you can easily clean off the palette knife and you don’t have to worry about contaminating colors with a dirty brush.

Simple to do - and can be either neat, precise, (and suitable for hanging on your studio wall) if you want - or they can be down-and-dirty, quickly done, and suitable for the painting you’re currently working on. Here’s an example of mine for a single painting in which I added a couple of new colors - so I did the down-and-dirty version - mixing the new paints with the rest of my existing palette:

It really doesn’t matter how you do them. What matters is that you know your paints.

You can either learn them by trial and error, muddling through and mixing on the fly, making uninformed choices and trying to remember what worked and what didn’t for next time, or you can devote a couple of days to something useful and smart - color charts.

Do them in between projects - or while you’re waiting for a painting to dry, or when you’re feeling uninspired.

They also look wicked cool hanging on the wall.

Well? What are you waiting for? Go paint you some color charts!