I am still creating color studies using my new watercolor crayons. I wanted to work with purple and its analogous colors. Both pieces are on Arches CP paper and are 9″ X 12″.
Purple Study
After I completed this, I decided to add purple’s complementary color to see what sort of exciting things would happen.
Purple Study with yellow
We got almost 10 inches of snow yesterday. To me this looked a little like sun shining a snow storm…some areas even had thunder snow. Oh My!!!
Good Morning to all my blogging friends. I have been going through a very dry spell lately – buried in one final tax return and administrative responsibilites for the docent program. I have not felt creative, just tired and worn out. When this happens, drawing or coloring seems to help rejuvenate me. Yesterday I decided to use a set of celtic stencils to create a postcard for my granddaughter who is out of town. I colored it with my Sharpie markers. I chose the colors carefully – green is her favorite color, blue is my favorite color, yellow is her mother’s favorite color and red represents her grandfather (not my husband – other side of the family) who is also suffering from cancer. I hope it looks interesting and cheerful. Like a family, all overlapping and woven together!
Celtic Design Postcard
Finished Three Yellow Tulips and I had forgotten how difficult yellow is to work with. Trying to lay in shadows and develop depth is TOUGH. But anyway I am happy with my three sunny floral friends right now. When creating this painting I reversed the process that I used on Three Red Tulips as Wric suggested. I think it worked well in this case. The white highlights are not quite as bright as they appear in the scan but all-in-all this is representative of the painting.
Three Yellow Tulips
Today will be a challenge because we are converting our family email to a new system and upgrading our cable with lots of new features. Neither Ken nor I are very computer literate so wish us luck! Off to work on cleaning up our “address book”.
One more story about my art.
Hope for Haiti
The images were everywhere and you couldn’t escape knowledge of the devastation in Haiti but in tragedy is change and rebirth. I was inspired to try to communicate my hopes for mankind through the painting of two watercolors on January 22nd and 23rd, 2010. Through the circles, spheres, bubbles I hope to symbolize the circle of life, a feeling of universalness and a sense of hope and even fun. Through the colors I want to include the traditional description of the various skin tones of mankind in a diverse and beautiful way. Through the composition I want to say that, while we are different, we are the same and that we stand together. On January 22, 2010 I wrote the words below which came straight from my heart.
Hope for Haiti - Red, Yellow, Blue
From red, yellow and blue all colors are created,
From brown, black, red, yellow and white the human race is made,
From Yahweh, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed and Jesus our spirits are refreshed,
We, man, woman, child stand together,
We are one…
Hope for Haiti - Colors of Man
Another beautiful hot and humid day in Indiana! It seems that my mind needs to loosen up after I do a realistic (even if Impressionistic) painting so yesterday I decided to play around a little. I let my mind roam as I worked on this piece. I recently bought 1/2″ and 1″ angled brushes and wanted to work with them. The first thing I did was to draw an abstract design by moving my brush around sort of like I do when working on sumi-e style exercises.
Playing Around 1
I was not able to maintain the tight control that I strive for when I am practicing Sumi-e strokes but remember – I’m just “playin’ around”!
I chose yellows, oranges and reds to “fill-in the lines”. Recently I bought Vermilion, a color in the Stephan Quiller line and I wanted to try it out, to get some experience with it. I painted shapes, overlapped shapes and sometimes overlapped shapes again. Good reinforcement about which colors are REALLY opaque!
Playing Around 2
I continued to reinforce some of the colors and then – mistake! – decided that the design might be too limited and to add some additional “stuff”. Stuff and nonsense was what it turned out to be so I decided to paint a nice dark, black surround to block out my additions. Anyway here is what I had at the end of my day of playing around.
Playing Around 3
From red, yellow and blue all colors are created,
From brown, black, red, yellow and white the human race is made,
From Yahweh, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed and Jesus our spirits are refreshed,
We, man, woman, child stand together,
We are one…
Inspired by the plight of our brothers and sisters in Haiti
Still frigid…still hibernating!
Exercise #3
Back to Stephan Quiller and Color Choices. This book includes a tearout color chart just for watercolorists. I am starting to use it to help me identify colors and complements for my practice exercises. It is very detailed and useful EXCEPT that I bought the book when it was published in the late 80′s and there are many new colors available today. I checked his website and I can buy just a color chart. Seems like it might be a good investment so my “tool” is up-to-date.
Exercise #2
I am still working on the chapter that discusses the use of analagous colors with a balancing complementary color. I completed two exercises yesterday, once again using some of his examples for my drawing ( I was spending hours developing new “scenes” to use for my excercises! I am saving loads of time using drawings based on his exercises – and they should be appropriate, right?) With these two exercises I complete this chapter. On to TRIADIC color schemes!
In Indianapolis it is frigid with snow falling and the wind blowing. I am huddled indoors, snacking on popcorn, watching the Colts shiver through the last game of the season and dreaming of the warm South. Like my idol Vincent…
In 1888 when Vincent van Gogh moved to the south of France he fell in love with the vibrant light i.e. the color yellow. His “high yellow note” added a glow to many of the 250 paintings he completed during the last 15 months of his life. Birgit O’Connor wrote an article for the January/February issue of the Artist’s Magazine titled The Golden Touch. In the article she discussed all of the different yellows that watercolorists are blessed to have available. After reading her article I got out my paints and tried out all of my yellows testing them for opacity, aggressiveness and the ability to make a lovely green when mixed with cerulean and cobalt blues. This was really fun and true hands-on learning. The information provided in Birgit’s article was very valuable. Birgit included a small painting of three lemons that I used as a template to paint my exercise. Each lemon includes at least 3 different yellows. I hope they add zest to your day!
After a watercolor sketch by Birgit O'Connor
