Shop Note

I will restrict this summary to what I think would be useful information that a marine painter can pass on to a ship modeler. I am indebted to many modelers who have unreservedly helped me in the past with my ship research, and I am grateful for this opportunity to reciprocate.

Remember that the observed color of any object depends upon the quality of light falling upon it. I use incandescent bulbs in my studio which have a slightly yellowish hue compared to daylight.

For acrylic painting of seascapes and ships on canvas, I use only 7 colors plus white and a special black. These are

Primary Colours
Cobalt blue	Ultramarine	Payne's grey (the special black)
Lemon yellow	Phthalo green	Titanium White
Alizarin crimson	Yellow ochre
	Burnt sienna

With these colors I can create an almost limitless number of other colors. Furthermore, I have total control as I can replicate any I color I want. White is the only pigment that I ever apply direct from the tube to a canvas, as I will mix everything else by choice.

When mixing a new color, I always use a cleaned brush. Even a minute trace of color on a brush from a previous mixing will contaminate the new mixture. This is cheap and easy with acrylics as the dilutant and cleaner is water. Generally, paints dry a slightly darker tone than when wet.

With acrylics, the three primary colors from which most other colors can be mixed are cobalt blue, lemon yellow and Alizarin crimson. (These are akin to the cyan, yellow and magenta in your computer printer).

DO NOT USE any other primaries. At school, I was wrongly taught that the primary colors were poppy red, school bus yellow and ultramarine. They are not primaries as they can be mixed from the true primaries. If you use these mistakenly thinking they are primaries to mix colors, you will most likely end up with the color of muddy brown.

To darken the tone of a color, I use Payne's grey (which is a translucent black). I NEVER, EVER use a proprietary black for darkening, it just takes the life out of the base color. To lighten a color, I use titanium white. Generally, to create a warmer color, I add more crimson, for a cooler color, I add more cobalt blue.

Be particularly careful with alizarin crimson. It is a very versatile primary, which I add to most of my mixes to give warmth. However, it is a very strong color and you only need a small amount.

The other colors on my marine painting palette mentioned above are:

Ultramarine (for mixing blacks, see below)

Phthalo green (for the sea only)

Yellow ochre (used sparingly in clouds, sails and for gun-stripes)

Burnt Sienna (a rich brown)

In theory, these last 4 could be mixed from the 3 primaries and Payne's grey, but you would not achieve the same intensity of color which is required in some instances.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

I ALWAYS mix my blacks, using ultramarine, lemon yellow and alizarin crimson. Together, these 3 can create a wide range of intense blacks, which I usually have to tone down with a dash of white. As mentioned previously, for a warmer black, I add more crimson, for a cooler black I add more blue, in this case, ultramarine. By adding more white you can produce an infinite variety of warm and cool greys.

For the yellow ochre gun stripe, the pigment direct out of the yellow ochre tube is always too strong so I have to add very small amounts of Payne's grey, white and the primaries to achieve the desired "Yellow ochre" hue needed in the painting.

For any painters in the group, I also use a technique called visual mixing in my skies and seas. This relies on the observer of the image mixing the colors in their head! I will explain. When viewed from even a short distance, the fine detail in a seascape is lost. Although I may have painted a blue and a yellow juxtaposed on the canvas, the observer's brain mixes them and he "sees" the color as green. This green is more vibrant than if I had mixed the blue and yellow on the palette and then applied the mixed paint to the canvas. To add to the complexity, the many surfaces of a ship at sea are covered with water, which is reflective, so you have to paint the reflected colours not the ship's colors. Finally, the application of a final gloss varnish coat can enliven the colours of the canvas, although I prefer to leave mine as a matt finish.

My comments on color mixing can be broadly applied to watercolors and oil paints but the names of paints do vary and the painting techniques are different. Regrettably, I cannot recommend any books on color mixing. I am a self taught artist and have learnt everything from my own mistakes! I would be very happy to respond to specific questions on this or any related subject, if I can help.
{Mike Haywood}

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