The Oil Painter's Studio

What finally worked…

I was working on a painting.

The sky was coming along beautifully.

But then I got to the distant mountains… and everything fell apart.

No matter what I mixed, the color was wrong. I just couldn’t figure out what that color was.

I kept adjusting, adding a little of this, a little of that, and before long I had a pile of muddy paint and a whole lot of frustration.

If you’ve ever painted, you know that feeling.

You can see the color. It’s right there in front of you. But somehow, you just can’t get. It’s just so illusive.

I spent hours trying to fix it.

Nothing worked.

The problem wasn’t the paint

For a long time, I thought I just needed more experience. Or some kind of trick I hadn’t learned yet.

So I started looking into trying digital color mixing tools.

I thought maybe they would help me understand what I was missing.

But they didn’t.

They were complicated, hard to use, and the mixes they gave me didn’t make sense for real painting. They weren’t practical. They weren’t something I would actually mix together.

I tried building my own digital color mixer using the best technology I could find. But still, it was useless.

That’s when I realized that the only way I could get real color combinations, was to mix them by hand.

I started with 500 color swatches, that eventually turned into over 1600. It took a month of mixing, photographing under controlled light. Recording every mix and bringing it into my the software.

That’s when everything changed

I went back to that painting I had put aside.

I uploaded my reference image and clicked on the mountains in my image. I remember thinking “That can’t be right.”

I got six recipes to choose from. I picked the closest match and mixed it, still shaking my head thinking that this color is wrong.

I applied it to those mountains and to my surprise it was dead on. I was stunned. I couldnt believe how my eyes had fooled me the whole time!

The rest of my painting went smoothly. I felt like I found the holy grail to color mixing!

I couldn’t believe what I had created worked!

It almost felt like cheating!

But how can it be cheating?

I’m not the only artist who has ever created color charts. Instead of them being on my wall. I built them into a program. It’s no different.

That moment clicked for me

I knew at that moment that this tool would change the way I paint forever. My values and colors are spot on now.

No more frustration and wasting expensive paint.

I contacted friends of mine, fellow artists, to test Artist Studio Pro.

They were just as amazed as I was!

I knew I was onto something when they confirmed what I already knew. This is a game changer, not just for me, but for artists who struggle with color mixing. Even pro artists get stumped by color mixing.

It’s not for a lack of skill, it’s because our eyes deceive us.

Our brains tells us what we think we see, not what actually is in reality.

Why I’m sharing this

I know how frustrating color mixing can be.

It can stop a painting dead in its tracks, like it did me.

It can make you doubt what you’re seeing.

And it can turn something you love into something exhausting.

If you want some relief and want to end the color mixing battle, try it for yourself, you can find it here. https://artiststudiopro.art/

It’s free to try.

Simply upload or drag in your image, then select your colors from the panel on the right. The colors are already preselected, so you just uncheck any you don’t have, and the app will recommend recipes using only the paints you’ve chosen.

It’s designed to be simple and practical.

There are also features to help you see and paint more accurately, including posterize in both color and greyscale to break down values, a grid overlay for drawing. It also has an image adjuster where you can increase or decrease chroma, lighten or darken your image, change the temperature to warm or cool and a sepia feature! A Studio Log to keep everything organized. There’s even a daily planner and a session timer to help you stay on track.

Going forward

This is a brand new website for me, and I’ll be sharing more of my painting process, color mixing, and what I’m learning along the way.

I chose WordPress because I wanted a space where I could write, share, and connect more directly, instead of being buried in social media.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my post. I sincerely hope you enjoy my content. Please do subscribe if you find value here, it means the world to me to connect with fellow artists.

Happy Painting!

Naomi