Blog
Progress Report 5
22/05/2021
Exploring Colour
I really enjoyed aspects of exploring shape, but found sometimes I felt restricted, especially when constrained to one shape, so I wanted to explore something which felt a little more free. Colour was the obvious choice for me, but I still wanted a focus for each set so thought I would use a different limited palette for each set.
For the first set I decided to explore an ‘off Zorn ‘ palette. The Zorn palette is the colours used by Swedish artist Andres Zorn. He used a limited palette of Vermillion, Yellow Ochre, black and white. and was able to mix these to get amazing range of colours and tones. However I chose to use an ‘off’ palette, meaning my colours were the slightly different. Instead of Vermillion I used Magenta. Instead of Yellow Ochre I used Cadmium Yellow Medium, and Instead of black I used Payne’s Grey. Using this palette I was able to get bright saturated tones, and deeper rich unsaturated colours. It was a fun palette to work with.
For my next six I opted to use a limited complementary colour palette of orange with Prussian blue, plus black and white. I rarely use a complementary palette so I knew this would be challenging and it was. I like the neutral desaturated blues and greys I mixed but the orange based neutrals were not to my taste. You will see that the blues won, and I discovered a love for deep indigo. I love these six small paintings-the texture, the look of old jeans and weathered wood really appeal and I think this is something I will definitely explore more. It is interesting in this set also to see elements of the shape series creeping in.
For my next six I used a variation on my earlier palette. My colours were Cadmium Red, Magenta, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine blue with black and white. I enjoyed using these colours so much. I was able to mix a range of colours from sweet pinks and violets, to deep rich burgundies, purple blacks and burnt oranges. This series also uses a lot of marks to add interest. I love all the small paintings I made in this series.
I was on the home straight at this point, but I knew the end few paintings would be completely different as I would be on holiday in the beautiful Highlands of Scotland, with little time, and a very small art kit and I would just see what happened on a day by day basis.
For the first set I decided to explore an ‘off Zorn ‘ palette. The Zorn palette is the colours used by Swedish artist Andres Zorn. He used a limited palette of Vermillion, Yellow Ochre, black and white. and was able to mix these to get amazing range of colours and tones. However I chose to use an ‘off’ palette, meaning my colours were the slightly different. Instead of Vermillion I used Magenta. Instead of Yellow Ochre I used Cadmium Yellow Medium, and Instead of black I used Payne’s Grey. Using this palette I was able to get bright saturated tones, and deeper rich unsaturated colours. It was a fun palette to work with.
For my next six I opted to use a limited complementary colour palette of orange with Prussian blue, plus black and white. I rarely use a complementary palette so I knew this would be challenging and it was. I like the neutral desaturated blues and greys I mixed but the orange based neutrals were not to my taste. You will see that the blues won, and I discovered a love for deep indigo. I love these six small paintings-the texture, the look of old jeans and weathered wood really appeal and I think this is something I will definitely explore more. It is interesting in this set also to see elements of the shape series creeping in.
For my next six I used a variation on my earlier palette. My colours were Cadmium Red, Magenta, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine blue with black and white. I enjoyed using these colours so much. I was able to mix a range of colours from sweet pinks and violets, to deep rich burgundies, purple blacks and burnt oranges. This series also uses a lot of marks to add interest. I love all the small paintings I made in this series.
I was on the home straight at this point, but I knew the end few paintings would be completely different as I would be on holiday in the beautiful Highlands of Scotland, with little time, and a very small art kit and I would just see what happened on a day by day basis.