Watercolors

I've been reading a book I found at a used book store about mixing your own colors and that there are no true primary colors. I've been doing my own experimenting with it and I've found that what is said in the book is true so far!

Michael Wilcox talks about how you can choose different colors, lets just go with the title, different blues and yellows and get a wide variety of greens! 

Here is the color wheel that I made with the following watercolors: Cadmium Yellow Pale Hue, Cadmium Red Light Hue, and Cerulean Blue Hue. As you can see, the greens are really bright and have a beautiful variety. The oranges are pretty, but don't have the variety like the greens do. And the violets/purples are all pretty much the same. When you use different blues and reds, you can get different purples. 

Here, I did a study with the same blue and three different reds just to show that you can get a huge range of different purples when mixing different primaries.  I'll do this with greens and oranges soon. 

I've been trying to learn my way around watercolors. I'm struggling a bit with them, trying to learn their qualities, the way they work, how they blend. I'm having fun but getting frustrated when I try to paint an actual picture instead of just doing color studies. I'm not giving up so you will see more studies in the future from me! 

Any suggestions on places, sites, books on how to use watercolors would be greatly appreciated! Until then, I'll keep practicing! 

Off to paint! Have a great day!

<3 Fritz