Colour Theory – Marion Boddy-Evans

5 October 20261 October 2026

Monday Motivator: The Answer Isn’t Another Tube of Another Colour

“If you have twenty colours sitting next to you, every problem can appear to have the same solution: Reach for another tube.

Take those options away, and you have to become more inventive. You start paying much closer attention to value … to how much paint thickness can affect colour. … the surface underneath. …

Rather than asking, What colour is that object? You start asking, what does this area need in relation to everything around it?”
Will Kemp, “The Materials List Is the End of the Story“

It’s no secret that my favourite colour-mixing combination is orange and blue. That I enjoy the brightness of cadmium orange and the dark depths of Prussian blue. Mix them to create an array of browns and greys. Change the blue or orange pigment, and you change the results.

Amongst the new example pieces I’ve been painting for my workshop at Higham Hall later this month is a new favourite colours chart.

If you compare it to the old one below, which dates back easily half a dozen years, you’ll see a couple of additions and fewer blues.

I do still have an assortment of blues to hand, but find I reach for Prussian or phthalo turquoise first.

There’s now diox purple, for dark shadows and interesting mixing/glazing with yellows. I also like it for covering unresolved paintings to reuse a canvas.

And there’s a red because I can’t get to a satisfactory red sandstone colour without it, so I need it for this coastline.

I do still prefer magenta for mixing rather than a red, because I find it leans into purples rather than my rapidly heading into browns. And I do enjoy magenta as a starting colour (coloured ground).

I’ve also added Payne’s grey ink because I use it a lot now, though rarely as a mixing colour.

Portsoy: The Burn of Durn II, 42x30cm, acrylic on wood panel

1 September 202528 August 2025

Monday Motivator: Connected Colour

“We are able to hear a single tone.

But we almost never (that is, without special devices) see a single color unconnected and unrelated to other colors.

Colors present themselves in continuous flux, contantly related to changing neighbors and changing conditions.”
Josef Albers, “Interaction of Color“, page 5

Stop worrying about getting one colour absolutely right and spending ages mixing it. That colour is going to look different when you put your next ‘absolutely right’ colour next to it anyway. So go with ‘more or less right’ and adjust once there are lots of colours in play. Interaction is the name of the game.

3 March 20251 March 2025

Fading with Time

Sennelier Nature all-natural pigments watercolour

“Knowing that foraged plant colours are short-lived, an artist would normally avoid using them in anything but ephemera. The last thing you want is to sell an art piece only for it to fade within months of being put up on a wall. But whether this evanescence should be considered a drawback or a quality, is a matter of perspective. Personally, it got me meditating on our expectations of artwork, the received wisdom that once finished it should never change. What if the work was intended to change with time? What if we accept that change and mortality are valuable aspects of reality? With a proper understanding of organic colours, I could work their fugitive quality into a piece, and insure that however much they fade, the work remains an art piece (as opposed to a piece that will deteriorate beyond repair…)

My first venture into this concept was my piece Loss.
Joumana Medlej, “Creating with the Land“

Joumana’s artworks “Loss” and “Blessings Everlasting“, where some colours fade through light and time whilst other elements* remain unchanged, captivate my heart and my imagination. The exploration of impermanence, the creation and knowledge of colours, the patience required for the cutting of the paper layers, words I can’t read. Designed to change, without controlling how or how fast it will.
^{(*the layers of cut paper, gold, mineral pigments)}

As I try to adapt to life without the in-house art critic, I hope for some things to fade and for permanence of others. I find myself wondering where I put that watercolour set of Sennelier natural pigments that has fugitive (non-lightfast) colours; the fear that the colours would fade stopped me from using it , but now I see possibilities in this. Colours that change, fade, and last as a representation of memory, grief, life.

30 August 202328 August 2023

The Other Story: My Watercolour Palette

When it comes to my watercolour set, it’s very different to the colours I use with acrylics and oils. I’ve built up a big set of tantalising colours by squeezing out tube watercolour into half pans (which have the names written on them). Opening the box makes me happy, being presented by the possibilities and joy of the colours, though I do feel a bit embarrassed bringing it out in a workshop where I’ve been extolling the virtues of a limited palette.

I know have favourites amongst these; I can tell by which I need to refill regularly, such as haematite genuine. I never use them all at once. I do know what most are, but will admit to getting a bit lost amongst the blues which look very similar as dark dry pans. I solve that by simply trying one after another till I hit the right one. I do know that the end one is Payne’s Grey and the one above is Graphite Grey (it has that typical graphite shine to it). I also tend to use the set orientated as it is in the photo, as this helps muscle memory in terms of what colour is where.

29 August 202329 August 2023

Controlling My Colour Mixing

When I first started painting my “Moods of the Minch” seascapes (the stretch of sea between the Isle of Skye and the Outer Hebrides is called the Minch) I used Prussian Blue, Burnt Umber, and Titanium White as the main colours. At times, the only colours.

Moods of the Minch: Cold Snap 80x40cm (31×15″ approx) Acrylic on canvas

Adding a cadmium yellow gives grassy shore greens, lichen on shore rocks yellows, and sunset colours. Adding magenta gives the pinks of the seathrift and purples of sunsets. Removing red from my palette as using it was how I kept ending up in murky mixes, and using magenta wherever I would have used red instead. Add lemon yellow which is a lighter, transparent, bluer (cooler) yellow, perfect for daffodils. Plus a black (PBk31) for sheep, one that when mixed with white leans into green, and mixed with yellow produces beautiful landscape greens.

For me Prussian Blue gives a sense of the cold Atlantic Ocean and dark showery weather, with a tremendous range from deep dark to very pale. It’s one of those “a little goes a long way” colours, and the way to control it when colour mixing is to add a touch of it into another colour rather than adding into a pile of the Prussian. It remains my favourite blue, and ultramarine remains my least.

When I started exploring using coloured grounds rather than working on the white of the canvas, and after a life painting workshop with Alan McGowan where I came away with the mantra “build a bridge between the orange and the blue”, I really got into blue plus orange mixing. A single-pigment orange mixed with a blue, plus white, is now a fundamental part of my palette. It gives a wide range of brown and grey, and because every mix is derived from the same two colours they all harmonise. (It needs to be a single-pigment orange because one that’s a mixture of red plus yellow goes into greens when you add blue, not useful for painting a seascape.)

I expanded the cadmium orange plus blue possibilities by using different blues, and worked with this for some time. Then I bought every single-pigment orange I could find to see how different oranges would work. Of these, Transluscent or Transparent Orange PO71 was the one I enjoyed the most, and this is now a standard on my palette too. It’s a transparent pigment, so mixes differently to Cadmium Orange, which is an opaque pigment.

The next colour I added was Dioxazine Purple, to explore purple plus yellow colour mixing and using purples in shadows. Made hideous murky messes with yellow, but discovered that mixing it with orange did beautiful things.

Moving to northeastern Aberdeenshire, I found I myself on seashores with red sandstone, a colour that wasn’t mixable with a palette that didn’t include red. So that’s been added this year though I haven’t got a favourite yet.

There’s one other colour that I use as an ink, but not as a tube colour, and that’s Payne’s Grey. I enjoy it for continuous line drawing. It’s softer than black, having blue in the mix. Mostly I’m using it as a strong dark, not as a mixing colour.

28 August 202328 August 2023

Monday Motivator: Subtle Variations in Colour Mixes

Monday Motivator Inspirational Art Quote

“She [Kate Waanders] happily mixes colours as she goes, preferring not to save mixes because she enjoys the subtle variations and new ways of seeing a colour when it is mixed again the following day.”
Amber Creswell Bell, “Kate Waanders” in “Still Life: Contemporary Painters” (Thames & Hudson 2021), page 249

Having the trust in yourself that you are able to remix a colour isn’t something you’ll see on lists of top tips for colour mixing. Possibly because you can’t shortcut your way to it; it comes from knowing your paints and how they mix with one another. That comes with practice, working with a few colours and getting to know how these respond to one another until it’s instinctive knowledge.

By a few I don’t mean a dozen. I’m thinking two plus white. Then add another colour to these. Then another, and another, giving yourself time to internalise how they mix until you can do it without thinking. We don’t think it’s odd for an artist to work only in pencil, or black ink, so don’t feel that because you’re using colour you have to use the whole rainbow instantly.

Another part of trusting yourself is letting go of the need for a mix to be absolutely identical to the one you made earlier. In most cases, it doesn’t matter; on the contrary, it adds visual interest. Put the energy you’d use stressing about this into progressing your painting instead.

5 October 202116 October 2021

What Colour is the Sea?

“Sea with waves does not have a universal colour, but he who sees it from dry land sees it dark in colour and it will be so much darker to the extent that it is closer to the horizon, [though] he will see there a certain brightness or lustre which moves slowly in the manner of white sheep in flocks
” … from the land [you] see the waves which reflect the darkness of the land, and from the high seas [you] see in the waves the blue air reflected in such waves.”
— Leonardo da Vinci, “Leonardo on Painting“, edited by Martin Kemp, Yale University Press, 2001, page 170

As frustrating an answer as it is, I think the true answer to the question “What Colour is the Sea?” always has to be “it depends”. There might be a single-word answer for what colour the sea is right now, from where you’re looking, but there is no single-word answer that is always right. (And certainly not living somewhere where the weather is as variable as Scotland.)

The colour of the sea depends on an assortment of elements, including the depth of the sea, how much wave action there is, how rocky or sandy the coast is, time of day it is, the weather. I’ve seen sea that’s dark near-black and sea that’s turquoise, sea that’s a mass of white waves and sea that’s white from reflected clouds. In summer, at sunset, I regularly see sea that’s purple and pink and yellow without a hint of blue or green. And in winter, at night, from my studio the sea a uniform blackness, with a handful of tiny lights from fishing boats and automated lighthouses.

There’s no shortage of options available to a us when it comes to choosing colors for the sea. A colour chart from any paint manufacturer will provide you will the full range. But the reason I have so many ‘sea colours”‘ isn’t because a sea painting needs so many, rather it’s because I like colours and so have built up quite a collection of blues over the years, though I do have a core set that I use.

So although I searched through my paints for the various blues to paint the chart shown in the photo, I used only a few in a painting. Painting a colour chart makes it easy to compare the various colors and the opacity or transparency of each, and to remind you of options beyond favourites.

I hardly ever use ultramarine, a blue so many consider fundamental. If things aren’t going well, I’ll revert to my beloved blue, Prussian, and after that phthalo turquoise. But often blue isn’t the answer anyway, and then I’ll reach for colours to mix interesting greys, and orange, magenta, yellow, iridescent silver …

See Also: Art Workshop Photos: Looking at Blues

25 August 202110 September 2021

The Colour Theory Triangle

My favourite starting point for colour mixing is the colour triangle rather than the more familiar colour circle. I think it’s easier to understand and makes remembering complementary colours simple.

(If you don’t see the video above, click here to see it on my Vimeo channel.)

The fundamental rule of colour theory for painting is that there are three primary colours: red, blue and yellow. The second rule of colour theory is that mixing two primary colours togethe creates secondary colours, that is purples, oranges, and greens. On a colour triangle, the three primary colours are at the points, and the three secondary are on the “flat bits”. All you need remember initially are the three primaries, because you can always mix two to remind yourself what they create.

The other reason I like the colour triangle so much as it makes it easy to remember complementary colours. These are colours that make one another look brighter, and also desaturate each other (make them less intense in colour). On the colour triangle, complementaries are the colour opposite, so Blue + Orange, Red + Green, Yellow + Purple..

The first color triangle is attributed to the 19th century French painter Delacroix. A notebook of his dating from around 1834 has drawing of a triangle with the three primaries written in as rouge (red) at the top, jaune (yellow) on the left, and bleu (blue) on the right, plus added the three secondaries as orange, violet, and vert (green). Delacroix adapted the triangle from a color wheel in an oil painting handbook by J.F.L. Mérimée, a painter he knew.
(Source: “Colour and Culture” by John Gage. Thames and Hudson, London, 1993. Page 173.)

1 April 2021

Not a Painting Project for 1st April

I had been thinking about writing up a painting project called “50 Shades of White” for an April Fools, using a photo of Ghost sleeping on the shelf in my studio. I’d put the ‘bubble paper’, which an order of paint/ink had been wrapped in, on the shelf, thinking it could be useful for collage. Next thing he’s on the shelf and fast asleep.

With the whites of Ghost, the roll of paper, the tub of primer (Michael Harding’s non-absorbent acrylic primer, for those curious) and its reflection in my watercolour set, and the whites of the pages of the closed book (volume two of the Matisse biography by Hilary Spurling), and the blacks of the shadows, it could be an interesting challenge. But not one I’m in the mood for right now, hence the thought of doing it as an April Fools’ project.

Then over breakfast this morning, reading various things as I do through an RSS Reader, I came across a long illustrated article on the use of white in art by Vinciane Lacroix titled “Challenge #9 White“, which I thought was far more fun. Even if you’re not in the mood for a long read, I think it’s worth taking a look at the photos of the paintings to refresh our thoughts on white as a colour. And let’s try, as Vinciane says, to “not pass by a white without observing the shades that dress it“.

20 August 2020

Interesting Greys

Grey days, with low cloud or haar (sea mist), when there’s minimal colour in the landscape are not “dull days” to me, but “interesting greys”. A challenge to find the subtle changes of colour, the gentle variations in tone (value).

I started thinking of “interesting greys” after looking at paintings by Whistler in the Tate Britain gallery in London one visit, where the whole painting is dominated by shades of grey. For example:
Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea,
Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, and
Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Cremorne Lights

Paintings I’d most likely walked past before, but spoke to me then, and still do.

I know it was at least 11 years ago now, because in October 2009 I did a Painting.About.com project in the style Whistler (see it on the web archive here).

In his Ten O’Clock Lecture of 20 February 1885, Whistler wrote: “He [the artist] does not confine himself to purposeless copying, without thought, each blade of grass, as commended by the inconsequent, but, in the long curve of the narrow leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he learns how grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances sweetness, that elegance shall be the result.”

Taking this to greys, I think it’s not confining ourselves to neutral greys, to greys mixed with black and white, but to explore those greys that have a touch of blue, green, yellow, pink, purple. The greys that happen when we mix complementary colours together — yellow/purple, red/green, and my favourite orange/blue — and can happen when we scrape remnant colours together on our palette (depending on what’s there). Add lots and lots of white to get pale interesting greys.

It’s important to make notes about what colours youre using for your interesting greys so that you can replicate them. Imperfectly mixing colours on the canvas/paper, rather than on the palette, can give compelling variations, as in this sheet done by a participant in one of my Higham Hall workshops.

Think of grey not as a constant hue, but a variable.