Evaluating the Dreaded Color Chapter

Most books on watercolor painting contain at least a few pages dedicated to color theory. Sometimes, the focus is on choosing paints; other times, it’s mixing vibrant colors; other times, it’s choosing color schemes, like what colors look well next to each other. Somehow, almost all of them manage to be extremely muddled and confusing, often racking up dozens of inaccurate or contradictory statements in only a few paragraphs. 

Here are the green and red flags I look for to determine if the author understands color theory and knows how to educate about it, or if they’re just typing out something because they know they’re expected to have a color theory chapter and they can’t wait for it to end.

Green Flags

Key vocabulary defined & used consistently

Many authors try to write about color without using “technical-sounding” terminology, but this usually results in more confusion. Here’s a short list of some terms that I think are useful to define and use:

• Hue
• Value
• Chroma
• Pigment
• Primary colors
• Complementary colors

Not all of these concepts need to be included. In fact, introducing terms that aren’t developed can be a red flag that I call “Glossary overload.” Rather, my point is that if the ideas are going to be raised anyway, I prefer to see the appropriate terminology defined and used consistently. For example, the words “hue” and “pigment” should be used to mean those specific concepts, and not used interchangeably or substituted with the generic word “color.” 

Pigment codes

Pigment codes or color index codes are another concept that many books try to avoid, maybe because it feels too weedsy or technical, but so often avoiding them just creates more confusion. 

If the book is going to bother to recommend specific paints, they should be identified by pigment code. If a teacher tells you they use “Indian Yellow,” this could refer to any number of combinations of yellow pigment that behave in different ways. Each brand’s Indian Yellow is a little different, and they have also changed over time. 

Without pigment codes, you at least need to know each paint’s brand name. Authors often avoid telling you the brand name of paint they are using in order to avoid buzz marketing a company that has not paid them, and to avoid pigeonholing students into using their brand when another good brand may be more convenient or affordable for them. These are understandable reasons, but without brand name or pigment code, you are setting students up for confusion when they get a color that has the same name as the one you are using and it does not behave the same way.

Paint properties other than hue

It’s important to acknowledge other reasons you might choose or not choose a particular paint other than hue: 

• Transparency vs. opacity
• Staining vs. lifting
• Granulation
• Tinting strength
• Lightfastness
• Drying shift
• Toxicity
• Cost/rarity

Books on art generally or on other paint media (e.g. acrylics) get a pass, but in watercolor, paint properties are very apparent and should not be ignored. 

Correct primary colors (yellow, magenta, cyan)

Ideally, the text should identify the primary colors of paint mixing as yellow, magenta, and cyan. If specific paints are suggested, they should suggest colors that map roughly to those categories, such as Quinacridone Magenta for magenta, and Phthalo Blue Green Shade for cyan. 

The older the book, the less I dock points. Modern chemistry made it possible to synthesize colors close to the actual primaries; artists of antiquity had no choice but to make do with the closest colors they could get, hence the traditional “red, yellow, and blue.”

Still, we are not talking super recent history here. Quinacridone Magenta was invented in 1958, and Phthalo Blue in the 1930s. For some reason, I’ve found it vanishingly unlikely to a book will identify the primaries as anything but red, yellow, and blue in books written before about 2000.

If I’m reading a book written in the last few years, I have no patience for “red, yellow, and blue.” It’s flat-out wrong and we have enough information to know that.

Science

The science of color is so rarely alluded to in color chapters, because most artists seem to be allergic to it, but I find learning some of the science behind this stuff to be useful – learning why is more memorable than rote memorization. It does not have to be complicated. Journalist Kassia St. Claire gives a good, simple explanation of subtractive color mixing in the introduction to The Secret Lives of Color. It’s brief and there are a lot of simple diagrams. 

Red Flags

Glossary overload

This is the red flag I promised you above. This red flag happens when the color chapter goes overboard defining terms that are never again mentioned in the whole book. It feels like the author lacked confidence in the amount of information they were providing in the color theory chapter, so they grasped for any term they could find in any other art book, instead of thinking about what terms would be genuinely useful for their audience to know to continue reading the book.

I feel this most often happens with color schemes – analogous, triadic, split complementary, etc. 

I don’t dock points for the mere existence of a section on color schemes, because it’s not bad information and I could see a book using it well, but I have personally found that in most cases, these terms feel like filler added to make the color theory section longer. They are rarely mentioned after their introduction.

Another common culprit is the concepts of tint, shade, and tone, defined as the result of adding white, black, or gray to a color.

This is not really all that useful in watercolor; compared to opaque paint media, such as acrylic and oil, it’s far less common to lighten a color by adding white, darken by adding black, or desaturate by adding gray. The word “tint” can be used to mean a diluted version of the color, but the other concepts are pretty uncommon in watercolor and generally feel like they were grabbed from another art book to fill space.

Shifting Terminology

A common and unnecessarily confusing problem is a lack of standardization of vocabulary with in the text:

• the use of multiple words for the same concept
• the same word for different concepts at different times

The author knows what they mean when they write it, but it’s a puzzle to figure it out if you’re outside of their brain, especially if you’re new and just trying to wrap your mind around this stuff.

Common culprits:

• Intensity: this word can mean so many things; it may refer to chroma, value, or a secret third thing.
• Saturation: Often a synonym for chroma, but like intensity, may also mean value or something else.
• Tint: May mean a light value of a color or may mean a different hue.
• Shade: May mean a dark value of a color or may mean a different hue.
• Texture: I’m the problem, it’s me: I use this one inconsistently. May mean granulation (visible texture on the page), or may mean the consistency of the paint / brushfeel.
• Color: The word “color” is the biggest culprit for confusing nonspecificity! I try to use “color” to mean the entire subject or the whole package of hue+value+chroma, but it is difficulty because it has so many colloquially meanings. It may be used as a synonym for hue, paint, or pigment.

Split primary palette / mixing by color temperature

Many authors center their explanation of paint mixing around the concept of “warm” and “cool” colors, which I think makes no sense and is very confusing, especially to beginners, who struggle to even figure out what you mean by “cool red” without also having to memorize a bunch of mixing formulas, like “cool red + warm blue = vivid purple.” You might as well just memorize your literal palette, “Quinacridone Rose + Ultramarine Blue = vivid purple.”

I am less opposed to color temperature in different contexts, e.g.:

• Color of light, as with light bulbs; e.g. “warm” candlelight vs. “cool” overcast light
• Emotional effect of a painting
• Creating a sense of depth, e.g. “cool colors recede.” While not my favorite way of explaining this sentiment, at least only requires you to know that colors closer to blue are cool and colors closer to orange are warm, rather than knowing what the heck a “warm blue” is 

I still think color temperature is treated as an intuitive concept when it’s not, but I can limit my red flagginess to situations where you’re required to memorize cool and warm versions of each primary color. 

Mixing mud

I have found it to be a red flag when texts claim certain colors or combinations “mix mud” or “don’t mix well,” because it is so rarely defined what this means. Rather, I prefer texts discuss when you would want to mix different types of mixes, and how to get more vibrant or more muted mixes, acknowledging that both may be desirable in different situations. 

In general, I like to avoid “purity” language which includes “pure” and its opposite “muddy.” 

Natural greens

Often within the same text, authors who warn you against mixing mud will also insist that “natural” greens are desaturated and that you must never use Phthalo Green unmixed because it is just too bright. This feels like a personal opinion. 

Recommending fugitive pigments

Basically, anyone recommending any of these fugitive pigments after about the year 2000:

• Alizarin crimson (PR83)
• Aureolin/cobalt yellow (PY40)
• Opera pink

I don’t think beginners necessarily need to care about lightfastness, but they should be warned.

Contradictory statements

Any contradictory information is a red flag. I have found these paradoxes to be the most common: 

• You must only have primary colors, but you must have mixing complements. 
• You must never mix mud, but you must mix muted colors. 
• You shouldn’t be formulaic, but here is the formula. 
• Be yourself and follow your heart, but there is a wrong answer.

Conclusion

Most authors seem to hate writing the dreaded color chapter, and you can tell. Beginners learn to hate and fear color theory because it is often taught with contradictory, confusing information. Even books that are otherwise fantastic tend to falter here. I don’t think it needs to be this way! Color is wonderful. The more I learn, the more I appreciate the rare and excellent work of those who truly understand it and know how to communicate about it.

So where can you learn? Here is my advice:

• If you are super deep in the weeds and want to know everything, work your way through the massive website handprint by Bruce MacEvoy.
• If you want a high-level overview, the introduction to Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair is surprisingly excellent.
• If you want a beginner explanation you can trust with practical applications, Claire Giordano’s beginner class simplifies extremely well; her explanation of using the MacEvoy color wheel with low chroma in the middle is revolutionary in its elegant simplicity
• If you are somewhere in the middle, pick up a copy of James Gurney’s Color and Light.

Otherwise, maybe just skip the dreaded color chapter!