Recently I've been working on paintings based on our trip to Port Douglas in Far North Queensland, and I'll admit, I've been struggling to get the colours right.
Normally I use Prussian Blue Hue and Nickel Azo Yellow (from Golden Fluid) to create some gorgeous greens that really mimic the ones that I see here in Noosa. However, the colours are quite different up in FNQ. The water has a turquiose-y, milky type colour to it, the greens are very vibrant and the blues of the sky tends to be more washed out.
I was getting quite despondent about my colours. The paintings were slightly off, and I couldn't work out why. And then, I was listening to an illustration podcast (Three Point Perspective) where they were talking about doing a Master Study (where you copy a painting from an artist you respect, and try and recreate it), and I suddenly realised that in order to get the colours I wanted, I needed a different blue.
So out went the Prussian Blue, and in came the Primary Cyan. Ordinarily I would have tried using Ultramarine Blue to see if that did the job (but I currently only have that colour in Heavy Body rather than Fluid). And lo and behold, the colours started to come together. I had to also use Bone Black to get the really dark colours (as PB is quite a bit darker than PC), but so far I'm happy with how things are turning out.
Made with Prussian Blue:
Made with Primary Cyan + Bone Black:
Can you see the difference between the two?