Creating Color Charts

I have been meaning to do the Richard Schmid Color charts as described in his book 'Alla Prima - Everything I know about Painting' for the longest time. So a couple of weeks ago I decided to 'just do it'! I ordered a dozen 8x16 canvas panels, some tape and decided to use my current palette with a few substitutions and additions (Terra Rosa instead of Burnt Sienna and Transparent oxide red) so it was similar to Mr. Schmid's with the following 11 colors.

Cadmium Yellow Lemon
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Yellow Deep
Yellow Ochre
Cadmium Red Medium
Terra Rosa
Alizarin
Transparent Oxide Red
Viridian
Cobalt Blue
Ultramarine Blue

Heres what the first taped canvas panel of Unmixed colors (in 5 values) looked like (took off the tape while the paint was wet and reused the grid for the next one).

It was actually a very interesting experience doing this chart since mixing colors while painting is very intuitive for me, I'm almost not thinking about the colors i'm mixing! This exercise forced me to 'see' the colors as they actually are and what mixing white to each of them does as they go down in value, even though we do this all the time, it seemed like a new experience!

Chart 1. Unmixed colors

I did two charts yesterday and two more today, with 7 more to go. But I am convinced that this is a great exercise and will definitely benefit me and change the way I mix colors next time I paint.

Chart 2. Cad yellow lemon dominant

Charts 3 & 4. Cad Yellow med & deep dominant

Exploring with field studies

Trying not to paint perfectly finished paintings outdoors but 'Exploring' a little bit by trying new colors, new ways of painting etc. Its good not to be attached to a painting so you can attempt stuff without feeling like you'll ruin it!

This is where I painted today. It was a picture perfect day though a bit windy so the boats were twirling constantly and once I decided on which boat I was painting, I had to patiently wait for it to come back to the right position!

Heres the study of the boat from this morning.

8x10 

I did a few more boat studies in the last two weeks here they are.

6x8

 9x12

So no finished paintings, but I got good practice in painting what i 'see'!