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 | | Composing and Drawing Tip of the Week. |
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Happy New Year!
Here is the southeastern US, we're having winter. For the painter who likes to get out and prowl nature, that means a total change of color. Instead of the variations of greens and brilliant colors of plants in bloom, our environs are mostly gray. On overcast days like today, the color lover in me can begin to rebel. That's good reason to dig into those grays and see what they are made of. Here's a fun exercise for doing that:
I took this photo from my deck just moments ago amid an overcast sky and mist. It's about as gray as it gets. I chose three areas of the photo where, when I look at the scene directly, I can see slight variations where color wants to come through. For each area, I isolated a section looking through a 1/4 inch peephole punched into an index card. I gazed through the peephole at the isolated area until a bit of color seeped through. I'm calling this "ambient color". Then I chose the brightest version of that color from which to work. Below is a chart I made showing the original color, the "ambient color" and a new color I made by mixing the ambient color with gray. 
Notice, I did an analysis for the sky color, too. From these new colors, I can do a painting that communicates gray, but with more feeling of life than is contained in the original colors.
Here's one of my winter paintings using this method for finding my palette of colors. | |
Dianne Mize "Winter Morning on the Tallulah" Oil on Canvas
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Happy painting,
Dianne
P.S. Soon, I'll be sending a special email announcing the new video tutorials that will be launched shortly. We were delayed a bit by the flu bug, but we're back on track now, so stay tuned.
P.P.S. The Facebook forum is becoming active with now over 400 members, some who are sharing their art work. We have twenty-three challenges for you to play with. You can do any challenge at any time. They are there for your enrichment and enjoyment. If you post your results, be sure and do so in the comments portion of the challenge to which you responded so as to keep the responses with their corresponding challenge. I will continue to add challenges from time to time.
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