A New Palette

5x7 inches, Pitt pen and watercolor

12x16 inches, watercolor

The colors in my favorite watercolor palette hadn't been touched since the snow was on the ground, and I had a burning desire to try some new color combinations, so I dipped into my Stephen Quiller book on color choices (Color Choices: Making Sense Out of Color Theory).  I soaked the old dried blobs out, squeezed in some fresh paint, and gave it a go.  The colors he typically uses are much brighter than what I have been using, but I thought learning to use new colors might be good.  My old palette had more colors, and was arranged by light values, medium values, and dark values, but this one has cool colors on one side, warm on the other. The colors include permanent green light, viridian, turquoise, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet, magenta, permanent rose, cadmium red, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow light, burnt sienna and cerulean blue.

The top one was small, just playing with a Pitt pen and color washes. I photographed the scene from a Washington ferry when we visited the San Juan islands last September.  The original was much paler and more misty.  The bottom sketch of a local railroad bridge was painted  on an Arches block, and the colors were mixed much more.  I'm not so sure about the ultramarine and violet I used as darks in the shadows, but I could learn to like it.  I wouldn't normally choose a bridge as a subject, but it was the challenge for this week in the Everyday Matters group.  I wanted to drive to the site and paint outside, but southern Wisconsin is in a rainy pattern this week, so I used a snapshot I took a couple years ago.  Such a wimp.