Painting and Colour Work
Painting and Colour Work tests your ability to mix and apply colour purposefully: a coherent colour scheme, controlled values, deliberate brushwork, and a surface that supports the subject. The exam is not looking for every colour on the palette; it rewards selection and relationships.
Colour structure
Hue is the colour name; value is lightness/darkness; saturation is intensity. Mix secondary colours from primaries, then use complements to neutralise (a little orange in blue makes a blue-grey). A tint adds white; a shade adds black or a dark complement; a tone adds grey. Warm colours advance, cool colours recede - use this to build space.
Schemes and mixing
Choose a dominant scheme: analogous (neighbours on the wheel), complementary (opposites), split-complementary, triadic, or monochromatic. Test mixed swatches on the actual support before committing. Mix more than you think you need; colours shift as they dry.
Application
Work thin to thick with acrylic; fat over lean with oil. Keep a clean water pot and wipe brushes between mixes. Use washes for transparent passages, dry brush for texture, scumbling for broken colour, and impasto for physical marks. Let each layer dry when it needs to.
Worked example: a market scene in late afternoon light. Choose a warm analogous base (yellow-orange-red) with a cool blue-violet complement in the shadows. Mix three values of each major local colour; reserve the brightest tint and darkest shade for the focal stall. Apply a thin underpainting, block major shapes, then refine edges only near the focal point. The reasoning: scheme controls harmony, value controls form, and edge control directs attention.
Traps: overmixing until colours go muddy, adding black to every shadow, painting flat local colour with no value change, using too many unrelated hues, and ignoring drying order.