Complementary Colors – Green and Pink

As much as I don’t like green and red together, I think green and rose is beautiful.

Scented Rose Geranium

This is the second little Artist Trading Card I have painted inspired by my Scented Rose Geranium.  Both  days I threw the die and got a Complementary Color Scheme.  Link to previous painting post.

The colors work better because the red leans toward violet and the greens lean toward yellow.  Rather than being the same value, as red and green are, pink and green offers more of a value range allowing the shapes to play more dynamically with one another.  The value difference is subtle yet effective.

I leave in the morning to teach color workshops at Village Art Supply in Santa Rosa, CA.  I hope to see some of you there!  I’m giving a free demo on Thursday evening.

Sketchbook Artist Trading Card: Scented Rose Geranium No. 2 – drawn first in ink with fountain pen, followed by watercolor

Color Scheme:  Complementary Color Scheme

 

Nespera Tree and Rosemary Plant

The large leaves of the Nespera Tree and the small leaves of the Rosemary Plant are painted using the same palette.

Loquat Tree (Eriobotrya-japonica) Nespera

Rosemary Plant

The palette for the leaves is cadmium lemon, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, cerulean blue and french ultramarine blue.

The background colors are drastically different.  The color scheme for the Nespera illustration is Analogous with Near Complement.  The color scheme for the Rosemary illustration is Extended Analogous.

Sketchbook drawings: drawn first in ink with fountain pen followed by watercolor.  3.5″ x 2.5″ standard size for Artist Trading Cards.

 

Rose Geranium – Fragrance without Flowers

As a teen I flavored shortbread cookies with Rose Extract. I saw it in a store and couldn’t resist buying it.  I can’t imagine what inspired me to add it to the shortbread cookie dough.  The delicious taste of the cookies comes back in a flash when I rub the leaves of my rose geranium plant.

Rose Geranium – Artist Trading Card

When I purchased the plant last spring I expected it to grow no more than 24″ high and be somewhat bushy like the ones in the fragrant herb garden at Lord Stirling Park.  Mine is now almost five fee high! The plant has never bloomed.  The fragrance comes from the leaves.

Color Scheme: Analogous with one complement – Yellow/Green, Green, Blue/Green and Rose (of course)

ACEO Sketchbook drawing: Rose Geranium –  illustration drawn first in ink with fountain pen, followed by watercolor.

 

French Tarragon and The Dance of Greens

By altering the green with each dip of the brush an illusion of space is created around each fragrant leaf of the French Tarragon.

French Tarragon – Artist Trading Card

The color palette is cadmium lemon, cadmium yellow, cerulean blue and a touch of french ultramarine blue.  Some of the leaves are painted with one stroke of the brush, others are painted wet in wet, adding variations of green within a single leaf.

Sketchbook drawing: French Tarragon – illustration drawn first in ink with a fountain pen, followed by watercolor

Color Scheme: Analogous – Blue/Green, Green and Yellow/Green.  Dominant Color: Green

 

Holiday Distractions

My brain often short-circuits at this time of year.  Sketchbook drawings usually reflect the scattered and disjointed thoughts running through my head.

Oxalis Plant with Abstract Shapes

At least three separate drawings are going on all at the same time.  The only consistent element of the drawing is the accidental color scheme.

Sketchbook Drawing:  Oxalis with Abstract Shapes – drawn first with inkbrush filled with Noodler’s Black Ink, followed by watercolor.

Color Scheme:  Analogous with Split Complements ( Yellow-Orange, Yellow, Yellow-Green with Red Violet and Blue Violet).

 

Curly Poinsettia, Eckespoint Winter Rose Dark Red

It’s that time of year again.  Jane presents me with a beautiful poinsettia.  This one, for me, is a new variety ….. an Eckespoint Winter Rose Dark Red, featuring curly blossom petals.

Eckespoint Winter Rose Dark Red, Color and Grayscale Comparison

The leaves and blossoms are compact and a challenge to draw in a visually dynamic way.  I experimented by inventing space shapes between leaves and blossoms.  I’m sure before the season is over I’ll give it another try.

Sketchbook drawing:  Drawn first with dip pens using Noodler’s Tiananmen for the curly petals and Private Reserve Avocado for the leaves.  I applied clear water to allow the ink to bleed into both the petals and leaves before adding touches of watercolor.

The Complementary Color Scheme of Red and Green, a  difficult color scheme to avoid this time of year.  Converting the scan to grayscale is helpful to see how strong the graphics can be using only one hue (green leaves against green background cell) when the value of the hue is extended from light to dark.

 

Spiderwort Color Study, Mid Range Contrast

Painting by color value does not always need to result in high contrast paintings.

Comparing Full Color to Grayscale Mode

Though there are extreme darks and a few strong lights, the overall feeling of the painting is more of a mid range contrast of values.  The leaves don’t contrast strongly against the background.  When violets are part of the adjacent colors, an extended analogous with one complement color scheme  provides an excellent selection of hues for any value range (High, mid or low contrast) even when painting with full saturation colors.

Spiderwort, Wandering Jew
Tradescantia Pallida

Sketchbook Drawing:  Spiderwort, Wandering Jew, Tradescantia Pallida – drawn first with fountain pen followed by watercolor.

Limited palette:  Aureolin, Permanent Alizarin, French Ultramarine Blue, Manganese Blue and a touch of Cerulean.

 

Far from Reality

My pressed clipping from a Red Tip Photinia long ago lost it’s brilliant color.

Pressed,dried, Red Tip Photinia clipping

The last couple of days I have painted samples of Color Value Painting, choosing hue according to its intrinsic value at full saturation rather than choosing hue according to the color of the object I am painting.  I want to show an example of completely arbitrary hue choices but I couldn’t bring myself to place full saturation red next to full saturation green.  Instead, I stayed with the left side of the color hue/value diamond.

Color hue/value

If it didn’t take so long to do the drawing, I would do another painting of the Red Tip Photinia using the right side of the diamond.

Comparing Full Color to Grayscale Mode

Sketchbook Drawing:  Pressed, Dried Red Tip Photinia – drawn first with pencil, followed by watercolor.

Limited Palette: Aureolin, French Ultramarine Blue and Permanent Alizarin (all Winsor Newton watercolor tube paints)

 

The “What If” got the better of me.

Rose Madder is the only fragrant pigment I am aware of.  I couldn’t resist adding a bit of it to the Rose Geranium sketch I posted previously.

Three Stages of the Rose Geranium Study

I could have, and probably should have stopped after adding two spots of Rose Madder.  But ….. my mind kept wandering to that place of curiosity that so often gets me into trouble, while at the same time pushes me ahead.  I wanted to see what the Rose Geranium drawing would like like with a background of yellow/orange.

Memories of playful times in the 60’s and early 70’s flooded my thoughts …. skirts made from half a yard of Marimekko fabrics, kitchen walls painted bright orange with window trim in bright pink …. and brightly patterned BBQ shirts.  Now chefs wear pants made from similar fabrics that awaken the senses.

The study went from being focused on shapes and patterns to being focused simply on playful color … not necessarily a bad thing.

Rose Scented Geraniums with Rose Madder and Orange

 

Rose Scented Geraniums, Variations of Greens

I’ve discovered the pleasure of growing plants to brew tea from fresh leaves.  Rose Geranium tea is delicious!

Rose Scented Geraniums – Pelargonium Graveolens

Both of my Rose Scented Geraniums share a large, clay pot beside my back stoop.  I have an Old Fashioned Rose Scented Geranium and a Silver Edge Rose Scented Geranium.  They are both considered to be Pelargonium Graveolens.  The fragrance is delightful and the tea brewed from their leaves is refreshing and subtle.  A touch of raw honey from the bee hives across the street and I’m in heaven.

Never again will I moan over the multitude of greens in the summer.  As long as I stay either to the cool side headed toward gray as a neutralized green or the warm side headed toward brown as a neutralized green (depending on my color scheme) I can have the best of both warms and cools without conflict.  If I don’t become too distracted, I’ll paint a chart that illustrates my point.  In this painting I stayed on the side of grays rather than browns and was able to achieve both warm and cool variations in the leaves.  My palette was viridian, french ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, cadmium lemon and a touch of permanent crimson.  Note that they are all cool variations of their hues.  I did not use a warm green, a warm blue, a warm yellow or a warm red.

The greens I created are not realistic for a sunny day, but are quite close to the color of the geranium leaves on a bright but overcast day.  My choice was not based on reality anyway….. it was based on beautiful color and the joy of allowing pigment to mix on the paper, wet in wet creating gorgeous transitions from warm to coll and back again.

Color Scheme: Analogous

Drawn first with fountain pen followed by watercolor