Palette Cleanser #53

Another installment of the palette cleanser series, this one features an array of warm toffee browns and yellows with green and red accents. The yellow background gives it an eerie glow. That pale green is actually a mix of the warm brown (PBr7) with a bright synthetic green (PG36) which produces an olive green. It is interesting that green is for the most part referred to as green- olive green, lime green, army green , etc. Orange, however, is not so popular, try to think of a variation of orange with a name. Here in Montreal I named 'Montreal orange' which is the colour of a traffic cone. In fact, brown is a variation on orange much the same as olive green is a variation on green. Yet we don't say earth orange, or army orange. 

Colour naming is a funny thing, which why several colour naming systems have been invented like the old Munsell colour system which used a series of numbers and letters to describe colours. The Munsell system or the modern versions can be read about on MacEvoys Handprint.com or wikipedia. I find the knowledge is not very practical for an artist, but imperative to understand the components of a colour. Since learning about colour attributes, I have been able to observe and produce a much wider range of colours (hue value chroma) than ever before. 

MacEvoy had a good quote, it was the last thing he wrote on his sprawling blog:

"Returning to paint each day, with the time I could bring to the task, I would teach myself to see." MacEvoy"

 Palette Cleanser #53, 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, January 2021 (No.2523a)