Experimenting with Opus Essential Spring & Summer Colours
June 30, 2022Earlier this year, we introduced 6 new colours inspired by the warmth of spring and summer to each of the Opus Essential Paint lines: heavy body acrylics, fluid acrylics, watercolour, and oil.
Like all Opus Essential paints, the spring colours are crafted by an artisan making small batches of paint. Each colour is formulated to yield the highest pigment load, producing brilliant effects. These new colours are also lightfast and long lasting.
Through the spring, some of our staff have experimented with the new colours. In this article, we share some of their creations to give you some insight and inspiration for creating with these new colours.
If you need a refresher on the colours we brought in, take a look through this article from our Conversations With Nature Create Guide.
Charting out the colours
We started by painting out the colours to see what we were working with! As shown in the picture below, there are a few different methods of charting out and testing your colours. (Some more structured and others more loose.)
As seen in Opus Staff Gabby’s colour wheel and swatches (center), the Opus Essential Spring & Summer Colours can be combined for clean, bright colours when mixing colours close to each other on the colour wheel.
The spring & summer colours also have the capability of creating interesting neutrals greys or browns when choosing colours opposing each other, such as Leaf Green & Lilac, or Glacier Blue & Salmon Pink.
Artwork made with Opus Essential Acrylics
Artwork in Acrylic by Opus Staff Members Kiera, Tas, Yewin, and Nicole.
Artwork made with Opus Essential Watercolours
Artwork in Watercolour by Opus Staff Members Star and Dani.
Notes and Experiences About The New Opus Colours
- The spring and summer colours are a great addition to your existing palette!
- If you’re painting with these colours as a set, you’ll want to add a few colours to help you create darker values
- The tertiary/neutral colours that can be made with these 6 are gorgeous!
- Corn Silk Yellow is well-suited to tinting, since it’s warmer than most whites – on it’s own it’s quite light
Watercolour Specific Notes
- The 6 new watercolours are a little gouache-like, because of their titanium white content, they can tend to be more opaque
- Lavender in watercolour is a granulating colour
- Leaf Green doesn’t contain titanium white, so it is more transparent, and can seem “glowy”
- These colours work very well on black paper!
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