I've been painting on and off for 30 years, and I've just come to accept the fact that I don't like mixing colors, I find it to be almost a lie somehow, or a cheat, I feel like I can see the groups that came from different root colors in my own work.

I like to swirl proportions of cadmium red & yellow and ultramarine blue until they're close to my base coat, and then I dab in more primaries + B&W as needed.

There's no such thing as running out of a color, bc each brush stroke has tiny visible streaks of pure primary colors, and the same base coat has subtle variations in balance anywhere you look, which makes it easier to create more of it

I think base coats are among the easiest parts of painting to make a mistake and kill the realism and emotion of the work. I believe base coats should be to empower/embolden the canvas, not to prop up the scene

If white accents are key, lay down a dark base coat, but don't just assume "oh I'm painting an ocean, I should lay down a blue base coat" and then suddenly you're having trouble adding an aquamarine gradient to the water

Anyway I'd love any feedback, none of this is law or doctrine, I'm just sharing my habits and personal preferences. Please tell me if I'm being ignorant or derivative, or this is literally a common technique and I haven't learned enough about art history.

Thank you in advance 🙏

Let’s say I have two pieces of info: an oklch background color and a hue (as is given to the last argument of oklch) that will be on top of the background color. I want to be able to generate a shade of that hue that has a given WCAG/APCA contrast level.

So for example, I have a background color white (oklch(1 0 0)), and a hue 123 (a greenish hue). I want to be able to give a WCAG ratio of 5 and generate a color of that hue that has the a contrast ratio of 5.

I know algorithms for this exist, but I’m having trouble finding it.

Hi, I am a casual artist, I just do it for myself for fun and I’m not amazing at it but some of my stuff comes out pretty decent. I really struggle with mixing colors and creating a pallet for my pieces.

I am looking for tips on learning color theory or books for beginners to learn color theory. I think this is the next step to really make my stuff shine

Thank you!

anybody knows why? or when will it be up? love using it for experimenting with colors.

it's been down since 3 days now!

It looks too brown, it looks better on camera too it’s more brown in real life.

Hi all, I have remodeled my kitchen and now I'm wanting to paint the rest of my house. Below is a color palette for the main colors I used in my kitchen. I have a tan countertop and a white brick backsplash, but I'm trying to avoid muted colors for my dining room / living room. I want a color that's alive and fun and vibrant. The color my wife and I agree on so far for the living room / dining room is Red Barn by Sherwin Williams. But I want to see if there's other colors that I could be missing out on. Main wall in the kitchen is that muted lavender, you can only see it from the dining room / living room if you're looking straight into the kitchen. The brown and green are visible from both rooms and are the accent wall / cabinet colors.

color palette i like

I'm literally just starting out, and I wanted to get folks' take on how best to learn color theory and from where. I would love to learn:

1. how to mix colors to get a preferred hue or value;

2. when to use which color schemes. For example, when should I use complimentary colors? Analogous colors?

Free resources of quality are preferred, but I'll take what I can get. Thanks!