COLUMNIST
OurcolumnistLAURA BOSWELLrevealswhyher
colourobsessiongotherbannedfromashopI
must have studied colour theory at
art school, but I never developed
any love for it. As a student, hard
finance taught me far more about
colour mixing than any class: printing
ink was expensive, and I was skint.
I learned very fast how to mix all my
colours using the primaries with as
little wastage as possible. To this day,
I mix new colours from leftover inks;
a habit I developed to save precious
materials, but one that gives my work
a cohesive and subtle range of colour.
My grasp of colour may not be
academic, but it is something I work
on all the time. I am very careful to
look at colour not only in the context
of the landscapes I work with, butalso in as many circumstances as
possible. Often a combination I find
jarring at first turns out to make sense
later and crops up in a print. Have a
good look at your clothes and your
home for starters – you will find a lot
of clues about your true preferences.
Understanding how one colour can
affect its neighbour is a challenge at
first. This knowledge will come with
experience, but you could speed
things up with a trip to your local DIY
store. The paint section will have a
huge array of options that can be
compared. Just be reasonable about
what you take and the time you spend
looking. I was eventually banned from
the store in my university town!BELOW Laura
Boswell, Gap in
the Hill, linocut,
34x22.5cm
The best advice for choosing
colours came during a conversation
with a paint manufacturer who said
that artists should trust their gut.
He advised that, when facing that
bewildering and seductive wall of
colours, artists should choose the
ones they liked, not the ones they
thought they should buy. It sounds
absurdly simple but worrying about
getting colour “right” makes it easy
to forget that colour choices and
combinations are a part of what
makes every artist individual.
So – aside from the primaries –
follow your heart, not your head.
Laura co-hosts a podcast, Ask an Artist.
Listen to new episodes at http://www.artists
andillustrators.co.uk/askanartistHard finance
taught me far
more about
colour mixing
than any class
Artists & Illustrators 29