Customer Reviews

Color Theory Made Easy: A New Approach to Color Theory and How to Apply it to Mixing Paints

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This book says it is color theory made easy. It is and the authors views on the way we view color were surprising and very interesting to me. The explanations are clear and he is not afraid to make definite recommendations. I now have a clear understanding of the potentials in blending colors. This book gave me a lot of confidence going forward. So.........here I go!

The book is clearly written with many full color examples of color theory application. It is written for the artist who whats to understand the practical side of color theory. The information presented in this book is directly applicable to solving color problems. Mr. Ames focuses on the thre primary colors and how to mix other colors from them.

As strange as it may sound, the system laid out in this book actually won me top prize at a really nice art show- something I never dreamed possible- BEFORE I EVER READ THIS BOOK!

I had purchased three colors on my way to a free hotel night with my family, and they just HAPPENED to be the three colors Jim says are the true primaries (cyan, magenta, permanent lemon). It was a total coincidence that I chose those three to purchase on my way there with a piece of paper and cheap brush. Those were the only colors I had with me.

I found the principles to be completely true through my experimentation. All of this quite by accident!

I just found this book recently and was shocked to find out why I enjoyed using these primary colors so much and why my paintings suddenly took on new life! Jim even breaks down a few colors by brand to let you know which are closest to pure primaries. There are excellent photos of examples of how to use the colors as well and compliment the "new" primary scheme with the other paint colors as well.

The principles in this book really work! My top prize in the art show can attest to that.

Combined with Michael Wilcox's book, "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green," this book will help make sense of the enormous number of colors available to the watercolor artist today. Many watercolor artists recommend specific colors just because they've been using them for years, or they confuse the issue by trying to talk about staining versus non-staining, opaque versus transparent, granulating versus non-granulating. Those are all important qualities to know about a paint, but even more basic to that is what color it is and how it will mix with other colors. If you understand the color theory presented in this book and in Michael Wilcox's book, then you will be quite capable of creating a wide range of quite satisfactory colors from just a few well-chosen basics. (Not that you have to stick with just a few basics.)

What I found particularly valuable in this book is that the ideas *work.* I am not so sure about his theory about *why* they work, but the fact is that they do. The information in this book both overlaps to some extent and is complementary to Mr. Wilcox's book, so I highly recommend that you get both books. Between the two, you will have enough grounding in sound, applicable color mixing procedures that you will be able to confidently mix any two colors you want and have a very good idea what you will get as a result.

This is a good referance material for comprehensive study of colors. I find it very useful when I have to use complementary colors and choosing colors from different brands. The author did in deepth study on how to mixing different colors with various outcome. It helps me a great deal to choose the colors I want to use in my paintings.

I just finish the book. i am not a painter but this book gave the basic, and more, theory on colors and how to use them.
I study graphics and design in computers and today I can select colors and understand why i was selected them.
this book belong to all of those that want to know how to understand colors and how, for instanse, to make a deap design or how to manipulate your color in the artwork.
use this book!

This book teaches correct color theory and gives a great deal of useful information. The scientific explanation of cyan, magent, and yellow being the primary colors is very convincing and makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of practical information in this book. I don't know if there are any better color theory books, but at least this book is a good one and not a waste of money like Quiller's book, "Color Choices."

Because watercolor colours name's aren't the same as acrylic and oil, it just doesn't make sense at all to me, and to say "made easy" I didn't think so, but i'm sure it's a great book for watercolorists!