For All HUE-low’s Eve, I’ve gathered some TINT-ilating tales saturated with ghoulish painting mishaps. I call them… 

TALES FROM THE PALETTE!

Our first story might CRACK you up a bit.

She had spent two days finishing up a portrait and all she had left to do was add on a background color. Her client had requested a dark purple, and warnings of it being a difficult color had not dissuaded them. She prepared the color as normal, mixing red and blue pigment with a bit of white until it became a deep plum.

She dipped a medium-sized flat brush into the plum-purple hue and began painting, quickly making her way across the page. A small kernel of red hidden in the paint left a deep streak across her previously flat background. “It’s not a problem,” she nervously chuckled to herself. “I’ll just add another layer.”

This time, a small blue kernel left a separate streak. Her paint was beginning to get too thick on the page. 

One more layer seemed to fix the problem, and she let the paint set and dry overnight.

The next day she made her way into the studio. Her face twisted into one of horror… her perfect painting was destroyed by a cracked background flaking off the page!

Moral of the Story: Impasto and multiple painting layers are best saved for acrylic and oil. Your gouache masterpiece will be ruined by thick layers.

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You might need to put your boots on for this next tale because it’s bound to turn your studio into a MUD ROOM.

Manda needed maroon paint for a project. She didn’t have the right color in stock and decided to mix her own. The first color she created was a bit too red. She needed to add some blue for balance. 

The blue ended up being too much blue, so she added more red. Again, the hue was off.

At this point, she could have separated some of the paint into individual containers and experimented with smaller quantities, but she stubbornly pressed forward and started adding anything she could to fix the color. “This will work,” she told herself in a state of manic hubris.

As she mixed the paint together it seemed to double, triple, then quadruple in size. It was no longer a recognizable color but an ugly, muddy mess that couldn’t be fixed. She had created a monster!

Moral of the Story: Don’t keep frivolously adding colors to your paint mix. It will create a mud-strosity and you won’t be able to control it!

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You look like you might be a little flushed! Don’t worry, we’re GUSHING to share our grim finale.

It was a crisp autumn day and the illustrator was working with her favorite color: a beautiful Marigold yellow. She had prepared her palette, putting a small amount of yellow and white next to one another in anticipation of mixing the perfect shade.

The illustrator grabbed a brush from the pile and added a bit of water. The brush touched the yellow, and without warning a terrible avocado green came gushing out. She had forgotten to clean her brush… her color was ruined!

Moral of the Story: Always clean your brushes thoroughly. Even if they look clean, they could be harboring dried paint in their bristles. This can reactivate with water and ruin your mixed colors. Ohhh, the heartache!

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It’s time to DRAW this gallery of horrors to a close. It’s been enough to give me an ART ATTACK! Hopefully, these cautionary tales have left you expired… I mean, IN-spired to make better choices than our hapless illustrator. I’m DYING to hear about any gouache BOO-BOOs of your own.

Until next Halloween, this has been TALES OF THE PALETTE!