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I know that I am a colourful character, maybe because I am always surrounded by colour and music. When you paint, your colour choices are important. They help to bring about the mood you are trying to convey. These can completely change your painting, giving the impression of heat or even a cold feel to them.

We all have our favourite colours. Mine just happens to be emerald green. This is what appeals to me, but whatever your choice, it is what may be central to you. This in turn may have effects on many things in your life and can even give you a feeling of space.

We all try this in our own homes. If you wish to have a calm air about it you would probably choose shades of blue, pale lilac or even green. These, to me, represent a cooler feel to them.

The same logic applies to our painting. If you want your painting to stand out in a crowd you need to use strong reds, yellows and oranges for example, to be very dynamic with all emotion flowing out of you. This will give your work an added warmth and you could always add a real gold to this.

Vlaminck loved colour. Colours can actually reflect our mood. For example “it’s a grey day” or “I’m feeling blue’. This explains how you are feeling at a certain time. Nevertheless, they stick in our minds. Paintings can be helped by using complementary colours. Colours appear to change when you put other colours beside them.

We all like different colours and also like to experiment with new ones. Make sure that you always have a white to mix colours and build up your shades from. Then, of course, some colours are permanent. Black, you will find, can block out colour. If you want to make shadows, shades of brown, whites or greys.

Now if you are doing watercolours, Paynes grey is a very good choice. You could mix it yourself on your palette. The mixture consisting of Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre and Mars Black. However, you can buy this ready mixed and because of its versatility, it is very popular with artists today.

At the end of the day, colour is very important to the artist. Well, after all, this is how we artists choose to express ourselves.

We mix our colours in so many ways, but it can assist you if you have a full knowledge of the Primary Colours and the basic Colour Wheel. So I can only suggest you go to your local art supplier and buy a Colour Wheel.

Colouring plays a vital part of your work, hence the make or break! Being drawn to different colours makes artists work more enjoyable to look at, as we all appreciate change and having another slant on something. Changing moods you have will be reflected in your work. Take as an example you have had a really bad day at work, you may take the misery out, in to your painting. Therefore it is likely to be dark colours used like blacks, browns, greys, mainly dark shades, at least this would be my choice.

I admit that I prefer brighter shades! Thank goodness that we all have different colour choices and use them to advantage for our type of art! Remember too, using white with just one colour would work very well, it doesn’t have to reflect a miserable feeling.