Branch Brunch, thoughts on brown

 

Time for another palette cleanser, in this case its the old broken palette I am trying to completely use up before tossing it. Brown is a difficult colour to work with, its essentially a dark version of orange, something I summarized in an old blog. There was a stretch of time from about 2018 - 2022 that I took it upon myself to learn about colours and art in general, it was basically a masters-level self education! Then the last few years I just forgot about it all and let the knowledge percolate into the paintings. With brown, it goes well enough with yellow, and dark blue. Other colours are awkward, like green and brown make you think of trees, and red/orange brown ends up looking like dessert. There are a lot of brown paints because they are based on iron oxide pigments, the oldest pigments known to humanity. 

Branch Brunch, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025