Blues

There are many wonderful blues. They vary in intensity, temperature and characteristics. In our blue week we had a fabulous range of blue objects to draw and paint and once again created the shadow colours by adding the opposite, orange. 

Burnt Sienna is of course a neutralised orange and a classic mixing colour with ultramarine. What is more surprising is that the opposite of phthalo blue is really a red - pyrrol scarlet or another warm orange-red - as phthalo blue is such a greenish-blue. Who says mixing a blue and a red will always make a purple?

I have included the beautiful genuine Old Holland Manganese Blue here even though it is no longer very easy to get hold of. The soft colour and pretty granulation is lovely. I have also included some Daniel Smith Primatek blues. I love the texture of Sodalite and Blue Apatite Genuine. I generally use ultramarine, cerulean chromium and phthalo blue in my palettes, perhaps with the lovely Indanthrone blue, but some of the others are fun extras :-)

You can see many more blue watercolours on my website here.