July Challenge- The REVEAL: Limited Palette, Limited Content #3

Challenge Drawing Game - The REVEAL

Red-Orange, Purple, Pale Blue: Script

Digital drawing, 10240px x 768px

This month, I have joined several internet friends in a challenge - create three pieces with a mandatory limited palette of only three colors: red-orange, purple and pale blue, and three words: "energy", "life", and "passion." All these elements were independently selected by the players.

I am a painter, of landscapes mostly, so I am used to working with images. Even when I am doing things like web design or posters where words are part of the content, overall I am concerned the look of the text in the design, and not so much with the meaning of the words.

At first, in this challenge, I found the required words to be just-plain excess baggage. Somehow, I had to incorporate them into the design. So they became another item to be balanced, repeated, proportioned, or scaled appropriately.

Gradually I became aware of using the meaning of the word in the piece, and I experimented with how the visual design supported or enhanced or detracted from that meaning in the drawing.

Then I found myself at a crossroads. What is my intent in doing the design? Am I trying to communicate the literal meaning of the word or words? Am I making a statement or exhortation with or about these words? Or am I making a visual design that speaks to the viewer at a subconscious as well as a conscious level? What do I want these words to do? What do I want my design to do?

So, that is where I will continue this line of inquiry. This challenge has been a good couple of weeks of daily practice, I have learned a lot about the software package I wanted to try out, and I have learned a surprising amount about my own approach to my work.

This is the last REVEAL - the third of three pieces for this challenge - let me know what you think!

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July Challenge- The REVEAL: Limited Palette, Limited Content #2

Challenge Drawing Game - The REVEAL

Red-Orange, Purple, Pale Blue: Flower with Words

Digital drawing, 10240px x 768px

This month, I have joined several internet friends in a challenge - create three pieces with a mandatory limited palette of only three colors: red-orange, purple and pale blue, and three words: "energy", "life", and "passion." All these elements were independently selected by the players.

Over the years, I have developed a routine of writing daily journal entries - nothing grand, it's mostly a morning mind-dump and sometimes a planning-session. Over the years, I have also learned that when I keep my sketchbook active every day, my drawing warms up with the practice. I know that what I am putting onto paper like this is not "great art" and it doesn't have to be, it's a routine, like brushing my teeth or doing the dishes. And it's necessary to me in the same way. So I welcomed this challenge as something that I could include in my daily routine.

What have I gotten out of it? Well, the elements of the challenge were different enough from what I am used to, that I had find new ways, every day, of making my drawings. And because I set my own challenge of using different tools as well, I have had to find different problem-solving strategies to come up with appropriate solutions to the challenge. In other words - I had to stretch myself to play this game, to meet this challenge.

And that's the fun of it - being playful, being creative, and refreshing myself.

So, this is the REVEAL - the second of three pieces - let me know what you think!

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July Challenge- The REVEAL: Limited Palette, Limited Content #1

Challenge Drawing Game - The REVEAL

Red-Orange, Purple, Pale Blue: Stripes with Words

Digital drawing, 10240px x 768px

Playfulness is the foundation for creativity. One of the foundations of playfulness is "rules" - what you allow to happen, and also what you eliminate from consideration - the rules of the game.

This month, I have joined several internet friends in a challenge - playing with a mandatory limited palette of only three colors: red-orange, purple and pale blue (each color independently selected by a player) and three words: "energy", "life", and "passion" (also independently selected.) Making these arbitrary limitations work together is the creative challenge. How I do it is my own solution, how I play the game.

I have added my own personal challenge to this game - I am trying out a drawing package for the iPad - and this game has been a perfect test for the past couple of weeks to put the new software through its paces, one digital drawing at a time, one daily session at a time.

This has been a "secret challenge" in that none of us participants knows, until now, what the others are drawing, how they are playing the game.

So, this is the REVEAL - let me know what you think!

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On My Back Door-Step # 11

Fireweed Turning Color (#11)

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Watercolor on paper, 11in x 15in
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In summertime, the fireweed plant has the-pinkest-of-pink blossoms that shimmer and are practically florescent in the sunlight, along with a subtle, sturdy green color for its leaves and stems.
But in the autumn, it is the foliage of the fireweed that has the showiest display, in fiery (of course) reds, oranges, yellows, and various shades of chartreuse.
In painting #10, I was unhappy with the mixes I had achieved with a limited palette of three colors, prussian blue, cadmium yellow medium and rose red quinacridone. Today, I added viridian and cadmium red medium to the lineup, and I substituted hansa yellow lemon for the cadmium yellow. Well, what a difference!
Today was a sunny fall day and the light kept moving through the trees, changing the intensities of the colors on the ground even as I was watching them brighten and fade.
Nevertheless, I am happy with what I recorded today. Never satisfied, but happy!
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On My Back Door-Step #10

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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