Blog

"Winter Colors"                                                                                        8"x10

I painted “Winter Colors” earlier this week. 

Notice the saturation and balance of color

when the shadows are long.

On the last day of the Sedona Plein Air Art Festival I had a chance to talk to

other artist who participated in the festival and we were able to share our

discoveries in painting. Tom Lockhart shared some of his techniques of laying

in color. He mentioned a process of painting in the complementary color first

and painting in the actual color on top.

Bert Kaplan  also works in this way. He is a member of the Sebastopol Gallery 

in which I’m also a co-owner with 10 other local artist.

I tried this technique as I painted in the Grand Canyon the next day. I found

it to be a great exercise in thinking of color harmony as I let the under painting

show through the colors resonate with each other. Notice the blue showing

through the orange cliff at the top left.

Grand View                                                                                           11"x14"

This approach is a completely different from my normal color lay in though I

believe we grow as we try new things. Sometimes we may not get the desired

effect but it helps keep artistic endeavors fresh and exciting.

Here is a painting I created using a limited palette of three colors. The colors are:

Indigo (cold deep blue)
Alizarin Crimson (Cold deep Red)
Chinese Orange (very warm orange)

These colors are great for winter scene.

Have fun!