Last week, I began a small watercolor class taught by a friend in Wichita -- the same friend who first introduced me to watercolor in 2005. Knowing his basic palette, I took those colors with me to class. BTW, they are the same colors I first learned with. Following along in class, all I could manage to mix was MUD, as seen in the next photo.
In class, we were each given a pile of magnolia leaves. We were to paint each leaf, let it dry, and add another layer of color on the next leaf, teaching about watercolor's transparency. No matter how I mixed the paints, everything I touched in class turned to mud. I then tried to add a dark background to force the colors to "pop"; as you can see from the results, it did not work.
Maybe when we feel negative about how something is going, it affects everything else we do.
Back at home, I rearranged the paints in my studio palette (a large Schmincke tin) with my most-used favorites in the first three rows. The back row is for colors I'm just playing with or rarely use.
(Terra Verte and perylene green are such lovely cool green shades . . . not at all the dull blue they appear here)
I re-did the class assignment later at home, using pigments I prefer. Since I didn't have the actual leaves in front of me, I went a bit wild with color too. (The lovely cool greens read as blue here . . . not sure why)
I love the redid version you did at home ... the leaves remind me of colored pieces of cut out glasses gently laid atop one another ... just beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI was kind of going for a stained glass effect. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWhat a difference colors make. Or just doing your own thing. I tried to comment the other day but blogger wouldnt let me. I & others have been having problems with the comment boxes not coming up to let us. Bloggers fault and frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you came back to comment, Cris!
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot about Blogger I don't understand. I've tried to make the settings as easy as possible to leave comments but things still go wrong. Sorry!