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A Brush with Phthalo Blue
In Color Week 42 we are exploring brushes and the color Phthalo Blue. There are so many brushes! There are real hair brushes like sable and camel, synthetic brushes, water brushes and specialty brushes such as bamboo and sumi brushes. everyone has a favorite brush, here we do a simple exploration of the options Round […]
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Hue Strings
Keeping it simple… Color Week 41 explores ‘Hue Strings’. An example of a hue string is shown below for cobalt blue gouache. This string is pure color + white. The exercise is to develop skill in mixing and in recognizing small changes in value. So we create lots of strings! Color is inseparable of it’s […]
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Apatite
Color Week 40 explores Green Apatite Genuine. This is a fascinating sedimentary and granulating color that ranges from a fresh yellow-green to dark olive. My acquisition of the color was by accident – it was included in a boxed set that was on sale. I was getting started in watercolor and thought the colors looked […]
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Vivid Colors
Color Week 38 explores what makes fall colors and foliage appear so vivid and bold. The ‘warm’ colors of fall foliage [ Yellow. Crimson. Orange] are cast against the complementary ‘cool’ blue of the sky and mountains. It’s the basic color wheel at work, the colors are opposite each other [Blue & Orange for example] […]
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Frog Visit
A visit to my garden by a frog is the inspiration for Color Week 37. My frog was brownish and appears to be a pacific tree frog. [reference USFW] Seeing the Frog reminded me of my Wedgewood reproduction Queen’s ware ‘Frog’ service plate. And as luck would have it I listened to a V&A online […]
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Color Week 36 Purple
Purple is generally, any color with hue between red and blue. In contemporary times purple is often associated with rarity, royalty, magic and piety. But purple has lots of history: The word actually derives from the name of Tyrian purple dye manufactured from mucus secreted by the spiny dye-murex snail. The dye came from the […]
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Douglas Fir Colors
It is now September, Color Week 35. This morning I went out to the beach to sketch and found myself looking at the hills as they meet the water. The hills are a combination of evergreen and deciduous trees, but that tree on the edge of the beach, tall and wind worn is a Douglas […]
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Rose Garden
Color Week 34 centers around the colors of the Woodland Park Rose Garden, Seattle Wa. Originally established by Park Board in 1922, the Rose Garden is one of only two dozen certified American Rose Test Gardens in the United States. At its picturesque best from May through August, the garden displays new rose hybrids […]
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The Colors of Plum Jam
Color week 33 features the color mixes for ‘Plum Jam’. It is jam making season and here we have 3 jams with distinct colors along with distinct [and delicious] flavors. Mixing the colors included a base jam tone and building from that base, much like making the jam itself. The grid comes from my wonderful […]
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End of Season Golds
Color Week 32 captures the colors of the end-of-season seed pods. The early flowering alliums, the tall grass and drying seed pods are giving us signs that the flowering season is ending in the Pacific Northwest. Yellow Ochre. Quinacrodone Deep Gold. Raw Umber. Naples Yellow. watercolor choices
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Drawn To Class
To keep up with daily sketching means that ‘every day’ I need to put something on the page. Some sketches take a couple minutes, a ‘sketchbook’ entry typically takes 45-50 minutes and a botanical drawing can take many hours. So I’m always looking for new ways to fill the page of my ‘daily sketchbook’. When […]
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Choose a Color Scheme
One of the tasks in a watercolor class assignment this week includes selecting a ‘color scheme’. It seems like a simple task – thus the topic of Color Week 29. Monet loved to use a limited palette. He achieved more luminescence by having to utilize more mixes rather than from a variety of colours. Typically […]
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