Colour Charts

The project is finished and is quite a display. It has been one of my biggest learning curves regarding colour. And it could be easily repeated for deeper insights into the mixing ratios, of for a change in palette. It has been an exhilirating project - sometimes it even felt alive!

Lemon Dish

This is a very shiny dish with a copper bottom, and the many reflections were tricky. I was trying to use up some of the mixed paint left over from the colour charts but that went sideways for a while. I think it ended on a good note.

Colour Chart #9 - before and after

This is the phthalo blue chart - all of the colours on my palette (across) have been mixed with this blue and then with white (down). The values are supposed to be correct and the last one nearly white. There are always a few smudges where the tape was not tight and then the cat tried to rub up against it. Each chart has a mess up. Maybe the 12th one will be perfect.

Green & Red

I am making steady progress on the colour charts - on #9 right now. So very interesting! Sure uses a lot of paint, with a lot of waste - so I used some up in this little painting.

Colour Charts #2,4 & 6

Charts are in process, and being slightly impatient, I am jumping ahead to see what the mixtures will look like because I basically know that Cadmium Yellow Pale and Cadmium Yellow will have minimal differences. So I ignored the Cad Yellow one for now and went to the Yellow Ochre and then the Cad Red. Will get to the stragglers eventually.

Colour Chart #1

The time has come to really diligently learn more about colours, and this comes in the form of doing 12 colour charts as described in Richard Schmid's book "Alla Prima". After frequently hearing or reading that it is time well spent, I am now in full agreement.

Who is the Fairest?

Here I had an orange ground, with the blue cloth as the complement colour. I fiddled too much with the oranges but I like the reflections in the silver container.

Blue Plate

One more try of the same theme. The pears photographed far more green than they are on canvas. At least the plate looks correct in shape - ellipses are improving. Now colours have become the focus and I have started to make colour charts for reference. Turns out to be a rather big project!

Pears turned Green

I was reading about giving the canvas a ground colour which is to be the complement of the dominant colour. So I put down blue, thinking of the orange yellow pears. Well, paint yellow on blue and it becomes rather green and then the red lost its colour too. And the pears photographed even greener. The dominant colour is red and therefore I should have put down green. Wonder what would have happened then? This is confusing.

Bila's Birds

My Mom has these lovely clay birds, and a blooming red geranium, that Mary and I painted today. While we were painting, 20 wild turkeys came to the window and were scratching around the fallen birdseed.

Castello Archway

Today I practiced on roses, again, and worked on some older paintings. This one is from two years ago and needed some changes. I found it a bit difficult to reconnect and awkward to paint over areas.

Rose

Kept working on roses today.

Red Roses

Happy Valentine's Day. These are my third attempt at painting these roses, and I still find them difficult to do....so it is time to haul out my books and sharpen the pencils again. But I do like the composition - sort of pleasantly in your face!

Another Copy

Because I found the design and the one blue stripe so fascinating, I had to copy Aaron's Lifferth's painting. It taught me a lot about areas that I need to work on.

Scotch Broom

The Scotch Broom was in full bloom during my first workshop with Ian Roberts in Provence France. This composition was originally just a value study and now seems to be the time to complete it.

The Driveway in Moonlight

February full moon - one more opportunity to paint a deep winter full moon scene. I used Prussian Blue to get the coolness and the darkness of the night, and because the white snow seems more stark against it.

Potato Art: Potatini

This potato theme is continuing - and as much as it amuses me, it is for my sons, and there is a story behind that.

Potato Art: Potato Day

Whoops, he/she/it saw a shadow...it was sunny here today. Well, I am getting fanciful....this is the potato that sort of looked like a groundhog............in my reality.

Potato Art: Have We Met?

Today I painted potatoes. They are an interesting item to paint because of their odd shapes and sizes. The markings on one of them looked like the face of a baby seal or a groundhog or some such weasel. I got rather fanciful and the imagination started to enter other realms.

Lemons

This is an assignment exercise from a virtual course I am following. The idea was to paint with a very big brush, except for a few finishing touches, thereby avoiding too much detail - so it was fast!

Clay Vase

This clay vase has a very rough outside texture. I was not pleased with the painted results so tried the palette knife and quite enjoyed that process. I think it looks more like the real thing.

Pink Carnation

The shadow was really strange and awkward to capture. First I had it really dark, then lightened it. Light was shining through the glass bottle. The background is a cloth with a chinese type of pattern. But the flower turned out.

Bowl of Grapes

Some work is still required on this one. Have been practising ellipses, but in this case I could avoid the issue by having the grapes sit on the edge.
Reposted - light and shadows added on wine bottle.

Winter Squash

My friend Dawn gave me this squash today, one of the many that she grew this summer on our horses' formidable manure pile - can't get more organic than that! The intention was to make soup out of it, but I love its shape and the splash of orange on its side, so first it was painted and then baked.