THE ZORN PALETTE
SUMMARY OF THE LESSON
The Zorn Palette has been a great introduction to color mixing for me! What has amazed me most, is just how many colors you can get from just four colors! The limited palette consists of red, yellow, white and black. We will begin by creating our own color chart, by mixing these four colors in different ways. You will follow my lead and end up with an amazing chart to refer to throughout the remainder of this course!
OBJECTIVES
- Learn about the Zorn Palette
- Get comfortable with mixing color
- Experiment with mixing different colors
- Understand how color changes when you add black and white
SUPPLIES
- Large Canvas
- Heavy or soft body paints
- Palette knife
- Palette
- Artist's Tape
Let's face it....color mixing can be very intimidating, especially when we don't really know what we are doing. So, the best way to master it, is to DO IT!
In this first activity, we are going to create a color chart using the Zorn palette. I will walk you through the lesson, but I do want you to realize that you can keep going at the end of the lesson. There are many different formulas to create new colors and I highly suggest that you practice this method in the future with other colors!
CREATE YOUR CHART
To prepare for this activity, you will need to the following:
- Paint your canvas with neutral gray
- Create your your graph using one-inch artist's tape, leaving one inch between each strip of tape. Layer the tape both vertically and horizontally.
- Label each column with your paint color and ratio.
- See example picture below.
LESSON 1 - COLOR MIXING
COLOR MIXING CHALLENGE
Now that you have a very good understanding of mixing color, I have a few challenges for you. With the remaining squares on the bottom, add the colors that are missing from the mix. For the colors that do not have black added, add black. For those that are missing yellow, add yellow. Do the same for the ones missing red. See what more you can get!
After this class, I challenge you to choose new colors to work with. Maybe you will choose:
- ultramarine blue
- cadmium yellow
- cadmium red
- titanium white
Another grouping could be
- paynes gray
- hansa yellow
- primary red
- titanium white
You will be amazed at what you can get from just four paints!
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT COLOR MIXING?
The following classes offer more lessons on color palette and mixing color! If you truly want to get better at painting, learning to mix from a limited palette will give you so much insight into how color, and paint work! Take 40% off of the classes by entering code MIXPAINT.
