The Beauty of Color
Kaaren’s Pears |
Celeste’s Colorful Hearts |
jonradio-remember-me
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action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114Kaaren’s Pears |
Celeste’s Colorful Hearts |
“The Hunter” by N.C. Wyeth. Powerful and bold – look at the beautiful use of a limited palette and a splash of red! |
“Master Bedroom” by Andrew Wyeth. This painting tells such a wonderful story, all again with a very limited palette. I want to curl up with that dog! |
James Wyeth, Beautiful use of limited palette of blues and yellows. |
A Color Study Example |
My workshop is about learning the properties of the paints you use, proper mixing techniques and how to use the color wheel to make different color schemes to use in your paintings. You will feel confident in your color choices and learn how not to get muddy color mixes.
Here you can see I used it behind the pitcher. |
I used several stencils as the background for this page about Vaison-la-Romaine. You can see where I used Pam’s stencil on the lower left. |
I used Pam’s stencil to make this color wheel painting.
We are both teaching with Artful Gathering Online Art Retreat. The second session starts on July 16, 2013. If you have ever been interested in drawing faces, you will love Pam’s workshop, Still Pursuing Portraits. My workshop, The Good, the Bad and the Beauty of Color is – well- you guessed it – all about color! Be sure to check out all the creative and fun workshops available at Artful Gathering Online Art Retreat! Finally here is the other side of the journal page – my painting from the day we spent at Vaison-la-Romaine…. |
Butterfly Weed Blossoms |
Butterfly Weed Flowers |
One of my favorite things to do beside painting is to spend time in my garden. Many years ago, I decided to devote my garden to helping the birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bees and other wee creatures procreate and survive. One addition that I really wanted for my garden was Butterfly Weed. I remembered it’s lovely orange blossoms from when I lived in Alabama. I finally found a plant labeled Butterfly Weed at one of local nursery. The tag showed the beautiful orange blossoms that I was excited to have in my garden. I carefully tended it but it took many years before it started to bloom. I was so disappointed to see these first blooms as they were not at all what I remembered from my childhood. These were pale colored and the few butterflies that came to my garden totally ignored these plants.
No butterflies on these flowers but the honey bees and ants like it. |
Over the years the butterfly weed did what weeds know how to do best and that is to spread to various parts of my garden. This year is a banner year for the blossoms. Upon closer inspection I find that they are quite lovely and have a delicate sweet smell. While trying to get some artsy photos of the blossoms, I was looking underneath the leaves to see if I could find butterfly eggs. I found some little black spots that could have been a fleck of dirt. I took photos of them so that I could enlarge them and get a better look. Sure enough – they are butterfly eggs! These are beautiful chocolate brown to black ovals with perfectly spaced grooves. They look like tiny rocket ships ready for launch. I search my books and went online but could not find any mention of black butterfly eggs so I wasn’t sure what kind of butterflies they would turn into. Everyday I check my eggs.
Closeup of butterfly egg |
Yesterday, I am so excited to share with you, I now have a tiny little caterpillar munching away on the butterfly weed. I can now identify the butterfly to be. It is definitely a Swallowtail Butterfly! It may even be the Oregon Swallowtail. I hope it will survive and that I have more hatch. I will keep you posted!
I made this short video to show you how marvelous this day was. Then look below to see how some of my students used this inspiration to paint some fabulous pages in their watercolor journals.