The New Color Mixing Companion

 The New Color Mixing Companion is a tutorial instruction guide with exercises to help the student gain facility with and expand their comfort zones in creating and mixing palettes. After many years of sewing and painting, calligraphy and needlework, beading and jewelry making, I've seen in my own artistic endeavors that I go back to the same 'comfortable' palette again and again. One of the reasons that I picked up this book and worked through many of the included exercises is to try to emerge from my comfort zone when picking project colors.

Released 4th Dec 2018 by Quarto on their Quarry imprint, it's 160 pages and available in paperback format.

Most art/crafting tutorial books concentrate on the technical and don't venture (much) into the philosophical side of creativity. This book is a joyful and exuberant exception. The author uses personal anecdote and a whimsically encouraging voice to provide profound insights into tapping our innate creativity to produce art.

The author grabbed me from the preface page on. I definitely wasn't expecting that level of emotional engagement and I was honestly moved to drag out my supplies (watercolors in this case) and start right away.

Here's a quote:

Though this book is about color and painting in particular, it’s important to emphasize
that creativity includes so much more than just visual art. We need creativity in literally
every area of our lives. The basic function of creativity is releasing old solutions
and generating new ones. Creativity is at the root of the scientific method, all kinds
of technological advances, and every breakthrough, large and small, in every human
effort—ranging from parenting to surgery. This book invites you to joyfully welcome
and nurture your generative powers. You were born to be creative. It’s one of the most
essential human endowments.

There is so much of this book which resonated really deeply with me. The author describes being stressed when buying and subsequently using really expensive professional art supplies for learning and experimenting. I have felt exactly the same so many times, with a nasty little whiny internal voice calculating how much money I'm 'wasting' using up this or that ingredient.  Wow, she really 'gets it'.

The exercises cover collage, watercolor, acrylic, and mixed media, but could (and should) be adapted to other media.

I've never considered myself a talented or even competent watercolorist. From the first exercises onward, I exceeded my own expectations and produced painterly results. I couldn't be more pleased with this book.  Obviously everyone is different and needs to find instruction and methods which work for them... but this one definitely worked for me.

Five stars, really worthwhile book.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.