A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors - Color by Betty Edwards

Betty Edwards has compiled more helpful information & useful exercises than I've found in numerous art/color classes & books of all kinds. Her book is a "must have" for anyone who wants to understand & use color well & to comprehend color interactions. It is wonderful!

Excellent book! Really, it helps you to understand the complexity of color in a very easy way. Betty Edwards is a great teacher, she gets to be clear as if you were taking a real class. I recomend it totally.

Using the book in conjunction with other Texts . very practical Book . Ideal for creating your first colour wheel . Explains Tones and Complementary colours in a simple and PRACTICAL way . I have been using it to play with mixing colours on my Palette , and recording the end result as a data-base for future reference . very much hands on book . Handy tool to use for on's painting journey

Anything written by this woman is amaaaazing!!!!! Loved this book! I have to recommend the others too!!!
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (BEST GIFT I HAVE EVER RECIEVED!) along with the workbook... and Drawing on the Artist Within.... if you have these books, there is no need for ANY OTHER on drawing instruction!!!! MUST HAVES!

I have read several books on color. Though others may have been more scholarly, COLOR by Betty Edwards is the most understandable. The exercises in mixing colors that she provides are not only excellent and practical, but are worth doing well and keeping for future reference .

After many years of painting, Betty Edwards's book on color has finally made me a lot more confident in knowing what I'm doing when I use color. She has broken a complex subject into great little lessons that are challenging but attainable. I think she is a great author.

I was a watercolor artist for ten years before seeking a degree in fine arts. While taking a required 3D Design and Color Theory class, from a professor who had been teaching the subject for 30+ years, I happened upon this book. The professor saw the book on my desk, swiped it (with permission), and by the next class period she had changed out our entire syllabus for the remainder of the year. Ten years later, she still uses this book to teach the core exercises for the color theory portions of her course.

I wasn't new to color theory, obviously, as I had been painting for 10 years already. However, I never really 'learned' color. This book taught me so much that I still apply to my work 10 years after taking that class. Everyone in the class seemed to enjoy the exercises and learn from them as well.

this is a disappointing book, for three reasons. first, edwards simply recycles the mummified "color theory" dogma inherited from the 19th century (primary colors, complementary color contrast); worse, she merely parrots it secondhand, in dribs and drabs and without understanding what she is saying. second, the "scientific" statements about color are dilettantish, superficial and in many specifics factually wrong, inserted merely to give her text a savant and authoritative tone. finally, the practical guidance is devoid of any artistic spirit: the introductory color lesson asks the student to make little wheels of color and then, when the little wheels are completed, to copy wallpaper. no, that's not a metaphor: you choose a piece of wallpaper, paste it to a sheet of watercolor paper, then copy the design while inverting or shifting the color scheme.

the grossly misleading information contained in this book speaks very poorly of the book's publisher. edwards directs students to use acrylic paints, then tells them to buy "cadmium yellow pale" (which appears in no acrylic paint line manufactured anywhere in the world) and "cobalt violet" (which is offered by only one acrylic paint manufacturer, and not under that name). she uses "hue" when she means "color" then, when she wants to signify "hue", she must call it "source hue"; she calls paints "pigments", achromatic or neutral colors "no-color colors", and saturated colors "spectrum hues", even when the colors (such as purple or magenta) do not exist in a light spectrum. she calls "red" the painter's primary color as opposed to the printer's primary color (magenta), when it fact magenta is the correct subtractive primary in both printing and painting; she claims there is no useful magenta pigment for painters to use when in fact several very satisfactory blue red and red violet pigments, the quinacridones, are now available in all commercial acrylic lines -- and have been used by artists since the 1960's. in their place, she recommends using alizaring crimson, a dull, fugitive pigment invented in the victorian era.

as we are in the realm of mummified "color theory", edwards relies on the 18th century complementary color contrasts (yellow+purple, orange+blue, red+green) for color harmony, guidance that has turned amateur painting into an anthill of identical cliches. this simplistic rule has been repeated for generations, not because it is accurate or useful (colors that are "off complementary" are actually more harmonious together), but simply because it is dogma -- something you can teach that has been taught before. significantly, these teachers (edwards included) are never fine artists themselves.

indeed, the whole book has numbly reductive approach that resembles teaching the deaf to sing. paint something simple, like a vase with flowers. hold up you metric wheels to judge colors. adjust colors using your wallpaper painting methods. make paintings by blocking in colors, then adjusting colors. stand back, squint, and "change whatever color doesn't look right." add colors that are missing and vary colors that are too similar. avoid mud. use complementary colors. get a new sheet of paper, rinse and repeat.

the only thing soaring about this book is the flight it takes as you fling it out your window; the only inspiring moment is when it flops into your trash can. yes! three points!

Betty Edwards, the author of Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain, has ventured into the world of color and painting with Color. Edwards demystifies color theory and brings it within grasp of just about any artist or designer. If you have had problems understanding just what makes up a harmonious color palette, then this book will help you solve that problem.

The book starts out at by explaining the basic vocabulary and works its way up to what makes a harmonious color arrangement. It achieves this with a number of exercises that are designed to give the student firsthand experience with mixing color and picking a palette. Though this book is written for painters, designers will get a lot of use out of it. In fact, I was able to do almost all the exercises digitally and got a good bit of benefit from doing so. I am a painter as well as a graphic designer, so I will be doing the exercises twice (once digitally and once with oils), but even if you are solely a graphic designer, this book will be of great benefit for you if you do not have a good foundation in color theory.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about the book was the numerous side bar quotes from famous artists and designers. We hear from the likes of Goethe to Itten. Though the quotes are not really needed for the text, it is certainly interesting to hear some of the greats talk about color.

The book's sub-title includes the word "mastering," but I do not think you will be a master of color after having read this book. However, you will have a firm foundation in color theory and will be pointed in the right direction to reach that goal if you put in the effort. So if you have always been mystified by color theory or never have gotten around to studying it, then this book is for you. You will come away from reading this book with a firm understanding of color and what makes good color design.

Really love this book. I have used the principles not just while making art, but also in decorating my house!

K. Kris Loomis is the author of How to Sneak More Yoga Into Your Life and the Modern Shorts for Busy People series.

I have been an artist/scientist for over 25 years. I have no problems absolutely in mixing paint and color theory. However, when it came to referring a book that would best explain color theory to a novice, I have to say that this one is it. It is colorful, easy to read and Dr. Edwards clearly defines the jargon used so that it is easy to follow. I have read the unfavorable comments, and all I have to say is that it is not meant to be a book on how to mix a particular color (hue, intensity, brightness,tint and so on). If that is what you are looking for,
a " how to" mix specific colors, yes you will be dissapointed. However, that is not its purpose. She specifically points out that there does not exist a true "primary red, blue and yellow" in tubed paints. Your in better luck using inks. Every artist should know that you can buy a tube color in different brands and get different range of that color! I can't imagine why someone would want to match a swatch to a printed book in which what you see comes via the mixture of colored inks! Often no two tubes of the same brand are exactly alike. So in her defense, I truely give her kudos for making the complicated issue of color theory simple. I really believe this is a must in every young artist's library and even in seasoned artist's. I personally enjoyed reading it and reviewing the theory of color in a way I wish was availiable when I was starting out. It makes a great gift!

I have Betty Edward's previous books, such as Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain, and I loved the layout. She brought that layout/teaching style to this book.
As an artist that uses pencil,conte,charcoal etc. to draw with, I had ignored the wonderful world of paints as a medium. So this red faced artist needed to go back
and understand colour theory. In the book she is giving you hands on projects that
enable you to apply the theory within that chapter for yourself.
As I have little painting experience I found this book very useful. It will stay as part of my library of the books to never get rid of or give away. I recommend it here and will recommend it to other artists I meet. Makes a great gift for any inspiring artists. :P

You already have a large library about color. We're painters and quite frankly, we're interested in our tools. Color is only one of our many tools we use to construct a painting. I've already recommended in an earlier ArtsyFartsy Newsletter "Powercolor" by Caroline Jasper - get this book. And now... add these three. I've read them thoroughly and hope you enjoy them as much.

"Color" by Betty Edwards. Of course you know of her and her information-packed books. "Color" includes very meaningful and tons of info: How light affects color; how colors affect one another; psychological meaning of color and so much more. It will be a big help in color mixing.

And speaking about psychological... the second book is kind of a hoot! "A Book of Colors" by Shigenobu Kobayashi. It's a tiny book featuring an endless offering of certain colors combined with other specific colors to evoke an emotional response. The author has conveniently arranged color combinations into "mood categories" such as Dynamic * Tender * Cool * Mature, etc. Originally I felt it was more for designers and the psychology of colorful products and interiors. I wanted to try out these colors to the text in a painting. Could I combine certain colors to get a specific reaction from the viewer? If I follow all the color combinations from this book, I'll be painting forever! This book is more of a novelty and a fun one to have around for ideas.

The third book is about one of my enjoyable pastimes - the origin of words, phrases, colors and clichés. Why do we say things like Willy-Nilly, Pig in a Poke, or Lickety-split? And where do colors like Royal Blue, Carmine Red and Ultramarine Blue come from?

Victoria Finlay's book "Color - A Natural History of the Palette" is an adventurous travelogue by this author as she searches and finds the origin of color and history as far as Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, India and other ancient cultures. I hated history class in parochial school. I always suspected the info was a bit slanted! Now with no Friday test in sight, I love reading books on real fact-finding historical subjects. This book is long and complete. Each chapter is devoted to a different color. You'll never read it cover to cover - instead, spend a week just reading the history of each color. It's a great research book too.

Did you know that Cleopatra used the color Saffron for seduction? Since ancient times Carmine Red (still found in lipstick and Cherry Coke today) has come from insect blood? And Ultramarine Blue, extracted from an Afghan mine was too expensive for Michelangelo to buy for himself... and don't get me started on the color Mauve! That, in fact is actually a totally different book that I'll write about later. Hey, it's all fun, light and enlightening! So curl up far away from interruption and entertain yourself with these three books.

This book is filled with so much inane garbage and factual inaccuracies, for someone who claims to be a teacher to present this book as a worthwhile is a joke. Please, don't read this book, you can find far better texts on the subject. For all the research in Goethe and Newton, there's basically nothing modern in this book. You'd be far better off consulting those old 18th century texts than this mess.

Edwards flat out states that the physiology of vision is a mystery, in what I suspect is not a typo but just poorly researched or discarded because it doesn't fit the antiquated views presented by Goethe and Newton. Even the afterimage effect she parades around in one of the chapters is totally explainable by science.

Then there's her choice of color palette. as has already been mentioned in some reviews here, Cobalt Violet is an extremely uncommon color(the only kind I was able to find was in watercolor, not acrylic), not used by...well, anyone. Alizarin Crimson is fugitive pigment, and quinidrone magenta would be better suited, and more lightfast, but Edwards basically doesn't know the first thing about pigments.

Her poor research continues when she addresses colors individually at the end of the book, stating things like that white represents purity in western culture, but death in eastern culture - except it does both in both. White is the color of ghosts in both the west and the east, and in India and Japan white has associations with purity.

I was also really impressed by her dig at photography, that showed not only snobbish elitism, but total ignorance of photography in general. And a lot of the book is like that, it could easily be trimmed down to half the size without losing any content, as Edwards rambles on with personal anecdotes that have little relevance.

As if all that isn't enough, the book doesn't really teach color theory. If you want to learn how to mix colors, yeah, sure - do the exercises, because they are actually aimed at mixing colors. I supposed that's fair because that's what the book advertises, but there's so much other crap in here. A lot of people say of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain that you shouldn't bother with the text, just do the exercises - I'd absolutely apply the same here, don't waste your precious time with the garbage text.

I'm gonna end this here, but I'm really only getting started. I could go through this book and find problems on nearly every page. I only got this book for a college course, but given it's content I'm thinking I did the world a service by taking even a single copy of this trash out of circulation.

I found Betty Edwards book on colors helpful and useful.
For me it it unraveled the essential codes of finding/establishing colors harmony in a painting. It represented a the next step after Johannes Ittens 'The elements of color'. I use Bettys methodology to teach color to children/teenagers and amateur students in painting. The exercizes are a good way to explore how colors change when mixing with each other.
The chapter on color symbols was too brief for me.
The 3 to 4 steps in a painting from painting local color to harmonzing colors in a composition was easy to understand and represents important basic knowledge in painting process.
when doing the exercizes it is not essential to have the exact colors that she recommends. it still works.
Recommended, beginners level.

despite many great reviews, i found this book to be mostly useless. there's very little practical information, and the exercises are more "arts and crafts" than art. the section on copying your wallpaper samples are a good example of this. what's most telling about how unhelpful this book is is that edwards herself doesn't show us any of her own art in which she uses the ideas she's writing about. in fact, if you go to what comes closest to being her website, you don't find ANYTHING that she's done herself. isn't this a little strange?

there are much better books on color available. steven quiller's "color choices" provides excellent, clear, and practical information on color theory and types of color schemes--monochromatic, analogous, complementary, etc and extremely useful info on paints for acrylic, oil, and watercolor painters. if you buy it used, make sure the color wheel/paint chart is included; mine wasn't so i had to return it. he has updated the color wheel since this book was written. i found the new one online and i believe it's in his newest book "Watermedia Painting". my only criticism of "color choices" is that some of his paintings are somewhat garish.

The information in the book is presented in much the same way that instruction in a college class is presented - step-by-step. The progression of the material is perfect. An artist at any level could learn form this author. It's easy to see that Betty Edwards is an experienced teacher.

There are projects in the book that ground the written information in hands-on learning. The projects are fun yet by their nature improve both color mixing and perception.

I highly recommend this book! Loved it!

I could have read a few wikipedia articles instead of buying this book. Very unhelphul and limited. Exercises that take up great part of the book are apparently there to make the book thicker - they could have been moved to an appendix with smaller font.