Fireweed Blossoms (#10)
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Watercolor on paper 11in x 15in
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For many years, I have worked with a limited palette of colors: a bright yellow, a red usually in the pink register, and a blue of some sort. Since I started these back door-step paintings, I have been using my outdoor sketching supplies, which include a portable box of a dozen pans of watercolor, two yellows, two reds, two blues, two greens, two browns, plus a black and a white.
Well, it's starting to get chilly outside, so on some days for this project I confess, I am actually doing the painting indoors once the drawing is established. And yes, I am noticing a difference in how I am handling the paint.
Indoors, I take more time in applying the color, and today, when I used tube color instead of my trusty little paint box, I fell back into my comfort zone of the limited palette of three colors. Honest! I didn't mean to! I did take out five tubes, but I only squeezed paint out of three of them, cadmium yellow medium, rose red quinacridone and prussian blue. So, there I was working with a limited palette again.
And what did I learn? I found I was unhappy with the approximation of the colors I was mixing, and with how distant those hues were from what I knew I had seen. In working outdoors, I have learned to perceive more of the colors that my eyes can distinguish.
I want to go back outside and paint this image again.
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2 comments:
My first exclamation was 'was oh!! what vibrant colour!' :) and yes it made me smile and feel wonderful.
Hi Leisa:
Thank you for visiting and looking at the new paintings. I am pleased that they give you a sense of what things are like from my back door-step.
I am also grateful with the way the style of the paintings is developing, and I hope you drop back again. Thanks!
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