WCS Painter's Corner

Learning in Arcylic, Oil & Watercolor

The thing that allowed us to get better the fastest was to work out some of these general artistic concepts not only while designing and tattooing, but also while painting.

We find painting to be a nice break from the precision of body art and the infinite possibilities of digital design.

Wynn Wheel tattoo color wheel developed for painting to practice

Exploring Other Mediums

It’s easier to practice the covered concepts and also take greater chances (stepping outside your comfort zone) in paintings than it is in body art.

We've built a painting set that uses all the same strategies (with a special Wynn Wheel) so that anything you learn while painting, will directly translate to tattoo ink mixed the same way.

En Plein Air

Get To Know Your Primaries

This smaller, minimal palette is meant for painting outside.  

Three sets of primaries (Red, Blue & Yellow) are used, but each with a different mood, and also white. 

This will help mixing the primaries, while keeping things fairly simple theory wise, using only three simple & expressive moods to make sense of them. 

Get In The Mood

  • Bright Primaries

    Cadmium Red

    Cadmium Yellow

    Cobalt Blue

    .

    Use the Bright colors anytime you want the painting to jump forward, or for part of it to be important.  

  • Drama Primaries

    Alizarin Crimson

    Lemon Yellow

    Prussian Blue

    .

    Use  the Dramatic colors anytime you want to add Drama

    (Hint: Reach for Prussian for mixing the deepest colors, Lemon for lightest).  

  • Dull Primaries

    Burnt Sienna

    Yellow Ochre

    Ultramarine 

    .

    Use the Dull colors anytime something is not meant to be important.

3 Paint Mixing Secrets

We use the same mixing strategies

We keep our middle values intense and bright, and create our shadows with complementary colors. We make our light values by tinting them with white to show form. 

The main difference is we must mix our own Secondary and Tertiary colors.

Mix them in any way you like mood wise, not just within each mood, but between them as well.

If using different moods together just think of them as being combined in Mood, Intensity and Value. 

The Painters Corner

Paint To Ink Conversion

We add Secondary & Tertiary colors to the “en plein air’ set, filling out all 12 sections of the Wynn Wheel. If you start with the 10 tube En Plein Air set you can add the additional colors in a few at a time:

Cadmium Red, Napthol Crimson, Cadmium Orange, Yellow Ochre

Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Yellow-Green, Hooker’s Green, Emerald Green, Turquoise, Cerulean Blue

Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, Dioxane Purple, Q.Magenta, Alzarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna

We prefer Blick Artist or Blick Studio paint which is amazing pigment at much better prices from DickBlick.com. Lemon Yellow we had to get from Windsor & Newton. Prussian Blue we get from Liquitex. You can really use any brand you want!

Palette Paper and a Matte or Gloss fluid medium is recommended. The palette paper is great for cleanup and the fluid medium can be used like water to mix colors and keep them wet, but works much more nicely and smoothly. 

Available Printed & Digital 11”x17”