Lesson 5 in Jane Davies 100 Drawings Workshop

This lesson was about color.

I must say that I didn't so much "struggle" as just not enjoy the first process of laying down areas of color. Laying down sections of color as a first step makes me uncomfortable. I always wonder whether I want hard edges or soft edges, high contrast or low contrast...etc. This time I ignored my thoughts (crazy as they may be) and really just put down paint to deal with later. That being said, once I started the mark making and emphasizing the color areas I loved this exercise!

I am disappointed that overall I did not get much variation in the yellow and will work on that in the future. The pinks and oranges, however show a wide range of hue and saturation.

1

I almost didn't post this one, but now that it is scanned, It feels successful. The dramatic difference in saturation of the 2 greens creates a great contrast. As I worked with aqua I realized that I have 4 shades that are almost the same. I added the light blue for some contrast. I almost never choose brown on purpose, but I'm glad I did. Even though it isn't fantastic here, having it on my palette made for some interesting paintings later.

2

In #2, the yellow is more saturated than the other colors and has almost no range in value. There are some marks in the yellow, but they are really subtle.

3

Starting with #3, I put yellow, magenta, and aqua down on my palette. It wasn't until I had used up all the paint that I realized they were essentially the primary colors!...just done my way.. --smile--
I played with hard and soft transitions here and I like having both in the same painting.

4

5

#5 is one of my favorites. The brown colored pencil made that stripe feel like a wooden log. The variations in the pink are wider in range, but there is a little more variation in the yellow than in other pieces.

6

In #6, I realized that I had been defining all of my color transitions with hard lines so I left some of the pink/blue transition undefined. I enjoy the low minimal value shift between the pink and blue coupled with the high contrast brown.

7

 #7 is an all-time favorite color combination with orange and aqua from across the color wheel. This has a lot going on in the large orange field that isn't all captured in the scan.

8

This one has some significant contrast between the red/pink areas and the orange/brown areas along with a wide range of values in the brown section.

9

The highly saturated chartreuse section makes me happy and I love it against the pink.

10

For #10, I decided to try a monochromatic color scheme and managed to capture many values and saturations of green. I always say that green is my favorite color, but I find it a challenge to paint with green.

11

In #11 I explored more gradual transitions. This was an end-of-the-palette clean-up with titan buff that became an analogous study through orange/red/magenta.

All in all, I found this a very successful exercise that made me look to create variety and contrast within my color choices.