1,500 Color
If you've ever stared at a muddy puddle on your palette wondering where it all went wrong, this book might be exactly what you've been missing. William F. Powell's comprehensive mixing guide covers oil, acrylic, and watercolour, giving artists a colour-coded reference they can actually use mid-painting without losing their minds. Two removable mixing grids are included, one for oil and acrylic painters, another for watercolourists, making the whole process surprisingly intuitive. The method itself is straightforward. Find your subject in the Colour Index, locate its corresponding recipe number, consult the photo of the actual paint mixture, use the grid to measure your pigments, and mix away. Over 1,500 colour combinations are laid out in this fashion, covering everything from a specific shade of broccoli green to the soft blush tones of portrait skin. Beyond the recipes, Powell also walks readers through colour theory, mixing values, complementary pairings, and how to grey a colour without it looking flat or lifeless. Sections on skies, clouds, and flesh tones give the book a practical depth that goes well beyond a simple reference chart. It's the kind of title you'll keep returning to rather than reading once and shelving. Other volumes in Walter Foster's Colour Mixing Recipes series focus on specific subjects such as portraits, landscapes, oils, acrylics, and watercolours separately, so this one functions nicely as a starting point for the whole collection.
- Author: William F. Powell
- Publisher: Walter Foster Publishing
- Genre: Painting
- ISBN: 978-1600588969
- Pages: 176 pages