Beginning to look at Helen Frankenthaler's painting techniques and colour mixing

I have started to look at the way that Helen Frankenthaler uses colour in her compositions. Frankenthaler uses either, watered-down acrylic paint or thinned oil paint in her work. As acrylic paint is available to me at home, I have began to experiment with this.

At the top of the page I have painted an area to show what the paint looks like when there is no water added to it. Then, gradually, I added more and more water each time and noticed that the colour appears more translucent, hence making the colour seem lighter. I have identified which colours have been used in some of Frankenthaler's work, for example, the middle three blue colours - indicating the colours that have similar consistencies to the work.

On Wednesday, I have specifically concentrated on mixing colours from Frankenthaler's compositions. This way, I have a documented process that I can refer back to when I want to make these colours in the future.

This page of my sketchbook focuses on ' Blue Atmosphere', I have noted down exactly which brand and colour of paint that I have used and at what stage I have added water. I think this will definitely help me when it comes to working in Frankenthaler's style, as I will already know how to make the colours  that she uses.

Progressing from this, I am going to look at using the soak-stain technique onto my sketchbook to experiment with the new technique which spans across most of her compositions. This is where watered down acrylic paint is poured onto a surface (she used untreated canvas) and manipulated using items like sponges or cardboard. I am going to try this first in my smaller sketchbook, following on from the mixing, but I think I will need to use my bigger sketchbook to be able to carry this out effectively.