Monthly Archives: April 2011

Two New Sketches

I’ve been so busy lately developing ideas for my Mastering Colour class that I have not had much time to do my own art.  I have been doing some preliminary sketches that I plan to develop as paintings as soon as possible.  These are 2 images from my sketch books that really spoke to me.  Both of them seemed liked they would fit one of my favourite formats, 30″ X 12″,  so I have sketched them in that format.

Currie Barracks
Riverview Gardens (Wpg)

Lake Reflections

Just tonight I videotaped a lesson that is a reinforcement of the first class in my mastering colour course.  One demonstration I did on ‘paint strength’ when used wet in wet sort of morphed into this image.  It reminds me of views I see often at our cabin on Lake of the Woods.  It also reminds me why I love watercolour so much.  That magical mixing of water and paint can create images that can’t be planned.  This painting began as a flat yellow orange wash over the entire surface.  I waited about a minute then added the thalo blue band in the middle (which combined with the wet background to create green).  After a couple of minutes for the surface to dry some more I layed in the very dark mixture.  Lifting out the light band in the middle completed this simple little image.

P.S. I hope to have the aforementioned video clip on this site very shortly so be sure to check back.

Lake Reflections
watercolour
5″ X  3″

For information on my Mastering Colour class or any of my paintings contact me.

Highway 762

This is a scene I’ve always enjoyed with these 2 old red barns surrounded by the green fields and hills on the road to Millarville. I started this image as a regular triad with Cad Yellow Light, Thalo Blue and Permanent Green Light but all these colours end up mixing to  green which is a technical challenge to make into a successful painting.  It was also impossible to get a red barn out of this.  Something was needed to break up all this green so I added Cad Red Light as a fourth colour.  That made this a little more of a real world exercise.  My colour hero, Stephen Quiller, mentioned in one of his books that I was reading recently that analagous  colour schemes are beautiful, definitely harmonious but ultimately they are limited.  They are great to learn colour theory but when we master colour we move beyond these narrow restrictions and just paint.

Mastering Colour – Triads

This painting is using a triadic colour scheme.  The colours are Cad Yellow Light, Dioxazine Purple, and Cad Red Light with Cad Yellow Light as the dominant colour.  Using a limited palette guarantees colour unity and choosing a dominant colour adds the emotional element.

Mastering Colour – Analagous Colours Part 2

This image uses analagous colours again but this time instead of using 3 analagous colours and one complement I’m using the complement of each colour to enable me to neutralize and darken each colour.  The 3 colours with their complements in brackets are Cad Yellow Light (blue-violet), Cad Orange (blue violet) and Permanent Green Light (Quinacridone Rose).  My dominant colour was the Cad Orange, sub-dominant was Permanent Green Light with hints of Cad Yellow Light.  Again the colour unity is very strong.  When you work this way you start to understand the emotional impact of various colours.  This painting has a fairly bright feel for a moody atmospheric painting.  I can’t wait to try it in cool colours.

For information on the Mastering Colour class or anything else contact me.