The Benefit of Mixing Paint
Written by Morgan Jones, August 2022
The year is 2020, the month September, and I’m back at my Mum’s place in Wales for a couple of weeks holiday. I’d not long finished my first collection, MJSS20 “Closed Waters”, and I was really into the idea of taking a little time off to reflect and digest. I was also really into the idea of doing some painting.
Since deciding to pursue Fashion Design in 2017 my education had consisted in large of Art History and Art Theory, resulting in a few scattered goes with the paints here and there. These little experiments were very rudimental and let’s just say I’m certainly no Vincent. That being said, I enjoyed the experience immensely and so I decided I’d spend my holiday painting. But what to paint?
After some thought, it came to me. I would do several drawings of a bamboo plant. I would then scale these drawings up to the size of the three large boards I had, transfer the drawing, get the paints out, and go at it. A little twist was added for some flavour. The positive space would be painted in a single tone, and the negative filled with an abstract arrangement of colours found in the subject itself.
Part of my motivation for undertaking this project was to give myself an education in colour. We as Fashion Designers work with colour all the time, and yet, it’s easy to take this variable in our work for granted. It seemed to me there was more to working well with colour other than instinct and I felt that an increased comprehension of it would carry over into my design work. So far, this has held true and anyway, as my Mum always says, “Knowledge is never wasted”.
In order to reproduce the tones observed in my subject, a particularly handsome potted bamboo, I would have to mix the paints myself as I only had a basic set of acrylics to work with. At the beginning of the project, I didn’t know how to do this. Practical experimentation was inevitable and this was supplemented with some theory. In particular the outstanding book Colour by Paul Zelanski & Mary Pat Fisher.
Brush in hand, it was time to get to it. No surprises when I realised myself to be clueless on how to mix the paints and achieve the tone I was looking for. I’d add this to that in a relatively random way. The result? Not what I was after. Back to the book. I’d try that one with these two and come up with grey… so much grey. Back to the book. Back to the paint. Back to the book. Eventually something clicked and upon combining x with y the desired z appeared on my palette. Victory!
After repeating this process numerous times, all of a sudden, something clicked. I was able to actually see colour for the first time. A real light switch moment. Pink was no longer pink but rather a ratio of red and white. Certain greens were more yellow than blue. My patient subject, Their Royal Highness Potted Bamboo IV, became a composition of subtle tones, rather than green with a bit of purple and brown.
Utilising my new found sense of sight, I finished the paintings, and as evidenced in a photo of me with them, I was chuffed. Since then, I’ve seen colour in a whole new way. Certain realisations in life I feel happen once, the penny drops that one time, and that’s it, you’ll never see the world the same way again. That’s what happened to me during this brief but invaluable foray into painting.
I’ve felt the benefit of this experience every time since when I’ve designed, selected fabrics, studied others’ work, and simply observed things in day to day life e.g. when looking at, let’s say, a potted bamboo.
If you are a Fashion Designer, or for that matter anyone working within the visual arts, I would highly recommend taking the time to become proficient at identifying a colour’s true nature and learning to replicate it. Let’s take a leaf from the painters’ books, they’ve been at this for a long time, and they know what they’re doing.
Hopefully that’s given you some food for thought and I’ve included some books below which I’ve found incredibly useful on my journey into the world of colour:
Colour by Paul Zelanski & Mary Pat Fisher 1989
A Dictionary of Color Combinations by Seigensha
A Dictionary of Color Combinations vol. 2 by Seigensha
TASCHEN’S Basquiat by Leonhard Emmerling
TASCHEN’S Matisse CUT-OUTS by Gilles Néret
Morgan Xx