Tuesday, September 14, 2021

September Palette, thoughts of Fall


Over the summer I made some adjustments to the palette, mainly to accommodate more yellow paint and to swap out a few like caput mortum (PR101) that was a little too dull and opaque. In the paint-out shown above, from top left going clockwise, the colours are grouped into five earth paints, three dark paints, one green, three yellows, black, two blues, magenta, red, orange, and another yellow. They are arranged more or less by their hue, and grouped by their general use. For example, the top right section is for making green foliage. The only new one is the fourth, I replaced the tea-coloured umber (PBr7) with a warm chocolaty brown called transparent umber (PR101) from Schmincke. The transparent umber is a great mixer, and is almost identical to burnt umber.

As fall approaches, the leaves of the trees will start to turn various shades of yellow, orange and red. Painting in fall has always been a challenge, one memorable one was done in London Ontario of a river reflecting the fall colours. In that painting I exaggerated the chroma to produce the feeling of fall colours even though the scene was rather drab in real life. One thing I may try this fall is to use dark magenta (PV19) mixed with yellow...it gives a range of yellow, orange and red that is about half way between full chroma and dull. It may be just the thing to get a natural looking range of colours this fall. 

September Palette, watercolour, sketchbook, 2021

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