Taking colour for a walk



I've been using one of the palettes from the ongoing still life project today. The main base colours of the painting are cadmium yellow deep and primary cyan.....yikes! Both are powerful colours and I used a lot of white, naples yellow and touches of burnt sienna, deep violet, cobalt blue and indanthrene blue to neutralise. (Usually my palette is a lot more limited - two or three colours + white)

It's not finished and might well just stay as an exercise rather than a finished piece but it's been good to step outside my colour comfort zone. The painting started as thin glazes in the sky and sea, then mid way through the waves and down to the sand I've scumbled all the colours together.

Once I'd gotten to this stage there was a lot of paint on my palette and not wanting to waste it I thought I'd take the colours on a walk. Below is a sketchbook page of our journey.

It makes me think of the Farrow and Ball paint chart and is a really good reminder exercise of how beautiful neutrals and greys are.

Just in case you missed it, there's a post over at Making a Mark all about Katherine Tyrrell's colour project with links to her squidoo colour page and lots of other resources. Be sure to bookmark it as it's a place you will definitely want to return to.