Art Every Day Month - Post 11

Complementary Colors

Leaves on the Forest Floor - Detail of 11" x 15" Watercolor on paper -
Study of chromatic neutrals from complementary colors




Source photo

 Walking along the trail on an overcast day, I was not so much scuffing my feet in the leaves as simply looking at them. I was impressed with how brilliant the browns and oranges and the occasional yellows were - and how, well, unsaturated, or unnaturally de-saturated, the colours of the other leaves were.

It looked like I was walking through one of these special effects settings on a digital camera, you know the one where you neutralize all the other colors except the one you are interested in showing.

The two complementary colours I used in this painting are orange and ultramarine blue, and their various chromatic neutrals range through ochre tones to khakis and dark dull grays. I layered several coats of watercolor paint, which allowed the pigments to pool and dry on top of each other, and which enhanced some already interesting wet-in-wet effects.

Art Every Day Month - November 2

Spotting Red

November Crackerberries  -  Detail of 11" x 15" Watercolour on paper - Study in saturated/ unsaturated colours

 Source Photo

 This month's AEDM has turned into a personal and professional challenge for me.

My overall intention is to loosen up my painting style by painting abstract images every day this month. "Abstract" means that from some source material, the artist extracts some theme and elaborates on it in the work.

Now, as a life-long realistic painter, I have come to rely on Image as a necessary part of the picture, and including detail and references is a tough habit to break, I am finding. Will I have enough time in November to show some progress with painting in an abstract style?

I have told my Inner Critic to take a month-long sabbatical, and so far I have been able to work uninterrupted. But old habits are hard to break, and this is "loosening up" is proving to be more of a challenge than I expected.