"Color is a power which directly influences the soul." Wassily Kandinksy

I showed these two paintings last week but I'm sharing them again because they directly relate to this week's topic. They illustrate just how much power colour has in a painting. I am not smiling in either of these paintings and yet the right hand one feels much softer and more optimistic than the left-hand painting.

Believe it or not, despite how different they look and feel, each of these paintings was made using the same colour palette. The colours are cadmium yellow medium hue, lemon yellow, pthalo blue, process magenta, black and white. (I actually started out with just one yellow but added the cooler lemon yellow so I could make a brighter orange).

Both pieces are still in progress and the colours may change and shift as I develop them, but I would like to keep this dramatic contrast in colour temperature. The left hand painting is very cool as it is primarily comprised of blue and green hues. The right-hand one feels much more warm and welcoming because it is primarily made up of warmer mixes.

As a result, both tell very different stories. The woman in the right hand painting feels much more approachable than her counterpart. The woman on the left seems to be pushing us away - she is cold and harsh looking. It seems we associate warm colours with warm feelings and vice versa!

But I want you to notice the harmony in each painting. All of the colours work together. Nothing clashes. Nothing looks wrong. The pops of bright red stand out in the first painting, but not in a bad way. They still fit within the world of the painting.

That is the power of a limited palette and it is the secret to my colour use.

I limit my base palette to no more than 4 colours plus black and white, and sometimes I go even lower, working with only two colours plus black and white. (In this case, black can serve as the blue, leaving you needing only a red and yellow to complete the palette).

Such a limited palette does restrict what you can mix of course. You will not be able to make every colour in the world from so few base hues. But you can mix plenty. Just look at the range of greens in my "cool" painting - everything from bright lime to muted rich greens that are almost blue. This is done not only by mixing my blue and yellow, but also by desaturating with black, white and green's complement, red.

But mixing isn't the only way to create beautiful colours. You can also think carefully about placement. I used the same lime green in both those paintings, but it has a different impact in each one. In the first one, it sings out because everything else is cool and muted. In the second one, it blends in with the other warmer colours, becoming just one note in the symphony.

I've learned a lot about colour over the last few years and you might think that means I am an expert in colour theory. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure I know the basics - I can tell you which colours are the complements to each other - but that's it. I never look at a colour wheel and I haven't read any of those big, complex books about colour.

Instead I learned the old-fashioned way, by playing with colour to see what would happen. I mixed all my different blues with all my different yellows, and then added some black and white and then some red, and I recorded all the results. I made painting after painting and discovered what worked and what didn't. And in the end, I found I could understand colour just by thinking of it in these ways:

1. Contrast always makes an impact. If you want to create interest in a painting, create contrast.

2. You can contrast colour by thinking of it in 3 different ways ....

3. Contrast colours by temperature (warms and cools)

4. Contrast colours by Saturation (the vivacity of the colour)

5. Contrast colours by tone (the lightness or darkness of the colour.

If you want to see this in action, look again at this painting (apologies for the slightly blurred image)

See those two red marks? They work so well because they encompass all 3 contrasts - light against dark, saturated against desaturated, and warm against cool. I also added a pop of lime green next to each one, because green is red's complement and always makes it zing a little more.

Those are such tiny marks and yet they make a huge difference to this painting.

I've been thinking about colour a lot recently as I have just finished creating a class for my Art Tribe membership called "Mixing Beautiful Colour." In this class, I'm demonstrating how I work with a limited palette, how I create my colours and how I record them so that I can go back and refer to them in the future. Finally, I will be showing how I use my colour mixing experiments to edit my actual paintings.

The class is released on Monday October 3rd and you can access it for free. That's because anyone can join Art Tribe for a free 30 day trial period.

As soon as you join, you get access to this new class, but also to every class I've created since March 2020, as well as a library of artist interviews, painting demos and inspirational videos.

If you decide to stay, you keep that access and get new classes and videos every month. If you decide to leave, you can do so before the trial ends and pay nothing!

Don't be daft! Come and get your free colour class :)