Creative Color

As the afternoon passed, the sky became more animated, expressing itself in shades of gray…

Clouds over the Wicomico River, Maryland

My week painting along the Wicomico River in Maryland has been incredible.  Next October, perhaps I’ll schedule two weeks rather than one.  I’m already planning to spend one night on the sinking Holland Island.  Thousands of pelicans are now the only residents, roosting in the silver branched trees and lining the sandy shoreline facing south.  At one time there were 60 houses and a few stores.  Most of the residents took their houses with them when they left the sinking island around 1920.  The last house on the island succumbed to the water in October of 2010.

En plein air oil sketch of dancing storm clouds, 5″ x 5″, Sky above the Wicomico River, near Whitehaven, Maryland.

Trumpet Parts Number 22 began well … but I got carried away, over-layering ink, watercolor and gouache to the point of loosing luminosity.

Trumpet Parts Number 22

The bright colored gouache dried five shades duller than it began.  I continued to believe that one more application would bring back the light value I needed to improve shapes and composition.  It only became muddier.

Close up of Trumpet Parts Number 22

As always, I feel time is not lost when I look hard enough for something to learn from the experience and experimentation.  In this case, I’ve decided I will try again, starting off with freely applied splats of ink as preliminary marks to work from rather than hold off until the painting is past its prime and I am left hoping that splats will re-energize it.

Sketchbook painting: drawn first with fountain pen filled with Noodler’s Purple Heart Ink, followed by watercolor, followed by gouache, followed by splats of watercolor and gouache, followed by splats of Noodler’s black ink, followed my many more layers of all of the above…….

Another attempt at the metal game pieces, still playing with primary color scheme.

Variations on line and color intensity

Still trying to get the last of the color from the very old set of Marvy Markers I found in the attic of my parents’ house. I find myself selecting primary colors more often than not and I’m not sure why.

Drawn first with Parker 51 fountain pen filled with Black Noodler’s Ink, followed by coloring in using Marvy Markers, limiting my palette to yellow, red and two shades of blue.

Spools of Yarn found at the flea market

Nicole, Tom and I set out early this morning for the Route 46 flea market.  One of the treasures that ended up coming home with us is a box full of spools of wool yarns dyed in various shades of reds.  I piled the yarn into my large wooden bowl and set it outside on the grass so that I could paint it in the sunlight rather than interior lighting.

I continue to misjudge the value of reds.  I shot a photo for future reference.  Turning both the photo of the yarn and the photo of my little oil sketch into grayscale is helpful to clarify my misjudgment.  I will try again on another sunny day, concentrating more carefully on the values and the beautiful, subtle color changes within the rosey red family.  It was difficult to create a light value of the yarn without it losing the richness of its local color.  Lightening the red with white tends to make it a bit pasty.  I was using my limited palette of cadmium scarlet, alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow pale, cadmium yellow medium, french ultramarine blue, viridian and permalba white.  The highlights on the spools should be at least as light in value as the background green.  Many of the spools can go a step or two darker to create a better feel of form and movement through the space around the spools.  I’ll pay closer attention next time around.