Short-Cut to Making Monocromatic Paintings

"Red Rocks Near Abiquiu", Oil on Panel, 6x6 inches

Jerry Lebo, 2007

In the past several posts, I have been demonstrating how to use a monocromatic underpainting to speed up your painting process--by identifying the major shapes and tones in a painting early. Today I am going to give you a short-cut to mixing tones.

Personally, I prefer working from a warm underpainting--and thus have shown you how to mix sap green and cadmium red to make a warm darker tone, which can be modified with white or ultramarine blue to make lighter or darker tones.

Recently I have been using Holbein Aqua Duo paints, which are water-based and thus easy to travel with. Holbein makes a variety of traditional colors, but also makes monocromatic tones to simplify the painting process. These monocromatic tones tend to be on the cool side (blue hue) but are easy to use and can be used to mix various tones quickly--or to modify colors to bring down their intensity or bring down their tone. Another advantage is that is very easy to mix five or seven tones for making a monocromatic painting. The Holbeing colors are called Monochrome #1, Monochrome #2, and Monochrome #3, respectively. The higher the number, the darker the tone.

It is pretty easy to mix these three basic colors into more tones. Here is an example of five tones I mixed in only a few minutes from these ready made tubes.

If you have been following this blog, you will know what to do next with these five tones...start painting. See my painting lesson on the "yellow cup" to learn more.

Good painting. Sixtyminuteartist