Inspiration: Stephen Quiller

Stephen Quiller is a fairly well-known American artist. He has written several how-to books about painting and color theory, and he also conducts painting workshops. And of course, he paints and sells his art.

Stephen Quiller - October Field Patterns

I became acquainted with Quiller’s work through an artist discussion board called WetCanvas. There I discovered his version of the color wheel (he immodestly calls it the Quiller Wheel). It revolutionized my understanding of color.

Quiller Wheel

The basic premise of the Quiller Wheel is that around the outside edge of the wheel are the pure, saturated primary colors. Primary red, bright yellow, and blue are spaced equally far apart from each other on the edge of the circle. Also around the edge, between the primaries, are the most highly saturated versions of the secondary, tertiary, and other intermediate colors, like magenta, orange, green, blue-green, and so on. So far, none of this is particularly revolutionary, right?

The kicker is what happens in the interior of the circle. Draw a straight line through the circle between any two of the edge colors (a “chord”, to use the mathematical term). This line represents all the colors you can get by mixing those two colors in varying proportions. Mix a lot of color 1 and only a little of color 2 and you land on the line pretty close to color 1. Color 2 has neutralized color 1 a little, and pulled it a little in the direction of color 2. Add more of color 2 and you slowly work your way along the line toward color 2 away from color 1. Additionally, by taking a mixed color somewhere on this line you can then create a completely different color by mixing some of a new color, call it color 3, pulling the result along a new line that aims toward color 3. And so on.

At the circle’s exact center, you get gray. When two colors can be mixed to create gray they are called “complementary”, and the line connecting them passes through the circle’s center. Points elsewhere inside the circle represent various shades of neutral colors, ranging from not quite fully saturated (very close to the circle’s edge) to very neutral (near the center).

Some tube paint colors do not land on the circle’s edge. Certainly tube greys, beiges and browns will land deep in the circle’s interior. But there are also colors that you might think of as “pure” that don’t quite make it all the way out to the edge. They’re close to fully saturated, but not quite.

This helps explain why you can’t mix cadmium red with cadmium yellow and get a perfectly saturated shade of orange. Only tube cadmium orange lands on the edge of the circle. The mixed orange lands on the straight line between red and yellow, slightly inside the circle. See? Not quite as saturated, not quite as far out on the circle.

Once you understand this idea, paint colors make a lot more sense.

This was an important step in my self-education. Armed with this understanding, I pared my palette down to just a few primaries: two reds, two yellows, and two blues (plus white, of course). Each primary color allows me to “extend” my reach to another part of the circle. (I also occasionally added in tube cadmium orange, a yummy color I wanted to use but couldn’t mix.)

With these few colors, most of the color wheel is accessible to me. I can mix nearly any color I could possibly want. The only exceptions being the most saturated secondary and tertiary colors, way out on the edge of the wheel between the primaries.

I got to test my ability to mix any color while taking a collage class a few years ago at the Museum School at the DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA). The homework assignment: find 3 colors you like (in magazines or catalogs), cut them out, then try to recreate each color as closely as you can by mixing paint. I chose three subtle, neutral colors that I don’t normally use in my painting, deliberately trying to challenge myself. To my delight, I got a very close match to all three. This confirmed for me the utility of a limited (but carefully chosen) palette.

I still enjoy looking at Stephen Quiller’s art, but for me his biggest contribution was the idea behind the Quiller Wheel.

Back to Phthalo Blue

A few months ago I mentioned that I was adding phthalocyanine blue (phthalo blue) back to my palette as an experiment. I think I can now report the results of the experiment.

When I was painting landscapes in New England, I struggled to use phthalo blue, but found it too bright and turquoise-y for my purposes. The colors I needed there were more red-toned, cooler blues. All I really needed for that was ultramarine blue. Phthalo blue eventually dropped off my palette entirely. I didn’t have a good use for it.

Then I moved to California. The light here is so different, as well as the terrain. Even the grasses and trees are different. I found myself in need of brighter tones to capture the brilliance of the light here, and so I reached for the phthalo blue. Recalling my earlier struggles with this wild color, I was unsure whether I’d be able to tame the beast this time. It was an experiment.

Now it’s been a few months since I started using phthalo blue again, and I’m pleased to report that it’s going much better this time!

Unfinished painting using phthalo blue in the sky and the hill shadows.

I find phthalo blue is just the thing for capturing the brassy light of California, with its bright skies and shimmering foliage. Phthalo blue mixes some VERY bright colors. This can be a problem if you want subtler tones, but it is terrific if you’re looking for brighter hues. Which I am! I am especially fond of using it in my skies, as well as in shadows. It also perks up tree foliage nicely.

The verdict? Phthalo blue is on my palette to stay!

Pop quiz

I’ve been painting with some new paintbrushes lately. They’re synthetic, and I am totally in love with them.

Pop quiz: Can you tell which brush has been used with phthalo blue?

These synthetic brushes work amazingly well with acrylic paint. It makes sense: acrylic paint is synthetic, so it’s highly compatible with synthetic brushes.

But that phthalo blue… it stains like crazy! Oh, the paint washes out of the brush just fine. But it leaves behind a very permanent stain. I can easily tell which of my new brushes have touched phthalo.

Phthalo… it’s forever!

Using White

I use titanium white as the white color on my palette. Its opacity is particularly suited to my “neo-pointillist” style.

“Glowing Hills” detail, 2007

I like how titanium white holds its own in mixtures with other colors. It lends opacity in mixes with transparent colors like ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson. A little white can tone down a saturated color. White can also make mixed colors a little cooler, which can be either good or bad depending on the effect you want. (One trick for keeping a color warm while still lightening the shade is to use some yellow along with the white.)

Anywhere you see what appears to be white in my paintings, it’s almost always a mixture of titanium white with a little bit of some other color. For example, those white-looking spots in the skies of my landscape paintings are typically titanium white mixed with a tiny dab of ultramarine blue.

Below is an older painting where I used white mixtures in several areas.

“Rough Pasture”, 2005

My Palette: White

We’ve reached the final stop on the tour of my palette: White. It is possible to paint quite successfully without black (and I do), but white is indispensable.

There are two kinds of white paint available: zinc white and titanium white. The main difference between the two is opacity: titanium white is very opaque and zinc white is more transparent. Zinc white is sometimes called tinting white or blending white.

My “neo-pointillist” style requires opaque paint colors, so I use titanium white. My style is a layered technique and I only want the top layer to show. When I paint a dot that overlaps other dots, I don’t want the ones underneath to show through.

Oh, and that photo above? Well, that’s what my palette really looks like when I’m painting. Big blobs of colors all over the place. I figured you might enjoy a peek at the real thing, and anyway white paint doesn’t show up against a white background very well!

My Palette: Orange

There’s one oddball color that I use on my palette: cadmium orange.

I call it “oddball” because I generally use a very limited palette of just a few primary colors plus white. I don’t even use black! (Not using black is another old trick of the Impressionists.) So why do I allow a lowly secondary color like orange onto the precious real estate of my palette?

I wish I could show you cadmium orange paint straight from the tube in person. (Well, I can if you come to one of my shows!) The photo just doesn’t do it justice. It is an amazingly saturated color. I can certainly make orange by mixing cadmium red and cadmium yellow, but it will be less saturated (duller). Granted, I don’t always want to use the brightest colors, but when I do want something really bright I like having cadmium orange to really pump up the volume.

It’s just too luscious not to use!

Using Yellow

“Trees on a Hill”, 2007, 12×9″.

As I mentioned last time, right now I’m only using one yellow, cadmium yellow. I almost never use it straight from the tube. It’s very intense. Mixed with white it makes a very strong yellow that doesn’t “shout” too loudly. All of the yellows in the above painting are mixed with at least a little white. The paler shades, of course, have much more white in the mix.

Cadmium yellow mixed with cadmium red makes a strong but not overbearing orange. I will talk more about orange in another post.

Mixed with blue, cadmium yellow makes a good range of bright greens. Given that cadmium yellow is an orange-yellow rather than a green-yellow, greens mixed from it tend to be less saturated. Even so, I often dull them down further with a small bit of red. The above painting is an exception to this rule, in that I used some pretty bright shades of green. All were mixed from cadmium yellow and one or the other of my blues (mostly ultramarine). I always mix my greens, I don’t use any tube greens.

The other yellow, cadmium lemon, is so intense that I had dropped it from my palette a year or two ago. But I am considering reintroducing it, especially now that I’m in California and need to depict the brassy light here. I might find cadmium lemon’s brash exuberance useful.

Mixed with blue, cadmium lemon yellow makes greens that are so bright they appear fluorescent… or poisonous! But mixed with white, and maybe a tiny bit of something else, it can make some very delicate pale colors.

We’ll see how I feel about cadmium lemon yellow when I try using it again. I’m looking forward to the experiment. And of course I’ll report on the results!

My Palette: Yellow

I started out using two yellows on my palette: cadmium yellow and cadmium lemon. Recently I’ve only been using cadmium yellow, but I am considering returning cadmium lemon to my palette.

Cadmium Yellow

As I discussed in my post about my reds, cadmium colors are typically “warm”. In the case of cadmium yellow, that means it tends toward a slightly reddish tint, like goldenrod. I think of it as a “mellow” yellow, though it is pretty bright straight from the tube.

The particular cadmium yellow that I use is Golden Paints‘ Cadmium Yellow Medium. It’s the tube to the right in the photo above. You can see the warm golden tone of the paint, which contrasts nicely with the cooler lemony color of…

Cadmium Lemon Yellow

Even though this color is derived from cadmium as well, it is a much “cooler” yellow than “regular” cadmium yellow. The “lemon” designation means that it’s closer to chartreuse than amber. It is so intense, it looks like it’s glowing. As you can see in the photo above, the lemon yellow (on the left) looks almost fluorescent compared to the mellow golden color next to it.

The brand I use for cadmium lemon is Winsor & Newton, since Golden (my usual brand) doesn’t make a cad lemon. The one drawback to the Winsor & Newton brand is that I can only get it in small tubes.

Using Blue

Unfinished painting (detail) using both ultramarine and phthalo blue.

As I mentioned in my last post, I use two blue colors on my palette, ultramarine blue and phthalo blue.

A few years ago, when I first left science and began painting in a serious way, I chose to use two of each of the primary colors (two reds, two blues, and two yellows). This was based on my studies in color theory (I’ll post more about that someday).

But as I painted, I found myself using very little of the phthalo blue. It’s a difficult color. It’s so intense, it just takes over any mixture it’s in. Colors created with it tend to be really bright. At the end of each painting day, I would find myself scraping a nearly untouched pile of phthalo blue off my palette. So I started squeezing out less and less of the stuff, just to avoid wasting so much. Finally I realized that I was fighting the color, and deleted it from my palette. The majority of my New England paintings were painted with only a single blue: ultramarine.

Ultramarine is such a workhorse, it’s not surprising I got along fine with it as my only blue for so long. It “plays well with others.” It mixes with yellow to make some nice vivid greens (which I often toned down with a small dab of red). Ultramarine mixes with alizarin crimson to make the most sumptuous violets and purples you could ask for, other than straight from a tube. Mixed with white, I got the perfect shades for the New England sky, which is a mauve-blue. Who needs phthalo?

Then I moved to California. The light here is quite different from New England. It’s bright and brassy. Even shadows have a brighter tone. That’s the old impressionist trick of using blue in shadows from the sky’s reflected light. Here in California, even the shadows are brighter.

I decided to reintroduce phthalo blue to my palette. The red-toned ultramarine blue I’d limited myself to no longer seemed sufficient to capture the nuances of color I was seeing here.

I still have to be very careful how I use phthalo blue. It’s a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, it certainly expanded the range of colors I can mix. On the other, it still wants to take over. I think of the color as “shouting”. When it shouts too loudly, it drowns out the other colors. And my other colors aren’t exactly shy! So I’m back to using both blues, but it’s a challenge.

My palette evolves as my painting evolves. And that’s a good thing.

My Palette: Blue

I use two blues on my palette: ultramarine blue and phthalo blue.

Ultramarine Blue

Once one of the most expensive and highly-prized colors used by painters, ultramarine has recently, thanks to modern science, become quite inexpensive and commonplace. It was originally derived from lapis lazuli, a rare blue stone. Medieval painters often used it to depict Mary’s robes, emphasizing her importance by using the most expensive pigments for her garments.

Now ultramarine blue pigment is artificially created and is one of the most affordable colors. Despite its low cost, it is a very valuable color for the artist’s palette. It is a red-tinted blue. Mixed with white, as shown in the picture above, it shows its lovely rich blue color with the slightest hint of violet, almost but not quite indigo. Mixed with red it makes some very rich violets and purples.

Phthalocyanine Blue

Often shortened to “phthalo blue” or “thalo blue”, phthalocyanine blue is a strong synthetic blue pigment with a slight green tint. It was developed in the early 20th century, and is used both in paints and for printing inks. It has extremely strong tinting strength, that is, it can easily overwhelm any other color it is mixed with. I tend to use it sparingly. “A little dab will do you.” Mixed with white, as shown above, it makes turquoise.