Blue to Yellow....a subtle change

When Sheep are Golden   oil/canvas   16 x 20 x 1.5

Come February, the light changes, creating a noticeable shift from cool to warm outdoor palettes.  This simple painting almost painted itself....very very rare.  I started with the same notion of a changing color temperature and a drawing.

The biggest challenge for me was to create the chaotic texture of that marvelous wool.....as a knitter of many years, I wanted to honor the glory of the sheep's contribution to our well being.  A bit of time was spent on hard and soft edges.  The background was kept simple.

I can honestly say that I truly love this work.

What's not to love when talking sheep?

Beer and Peanuts

Beer and Peanuts   watercolor   13.5 x 8

is the result of a paint-a-bottle challenge..so many ellipses, and each one tilted toward the horizon line!  Not to mention the challenge of a label which also involves ellipses and the additional task of rendering typography in a convincing yet not-too-detailed way.  For me, the peanuts were rendered quickly and left untouched...those passages are usually the most convincing.  The background was the toughest.  The first pass was a cool blue-green hue which, along the way, seemed unsatisfactory to me.  The graded orange wash was subsequently layered over it.  I am satisfied. 

Lemonade...

Lemonade   watercolor   13.5 x 18

Who wouldn't like some?  Especially here in northeast Ohio where the temperature is hovering at 90 degrees in the shade.  This watercolor was done in class from items that were put together by artists in the class.  I have since stopped the "everybody bring something" method of setting up a still life as the resultant composition usually contained too many elements for my liking.  But this one worked out well for a couple of reasons.  I tend to like an opposing color temperature as an underlying wash.  This is more difficult to do with watercolor.  And I also like mixing the organic and geometric shapes that create balance....a great yin-yang combo. 

The difficult part, as I recall was keeping the lemonade fresh with ice cubes.....we were all melting.

Is Roy G. Biv a Real Person?

In school we learned in both science and art classes that light filtered through a prism is divided into 7 colors, namely: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. We memorized the Roy G. Biv mantra in order to remember it for the test. And, still, I ask: isn't indigo a shade of blue? I am now realizing how subjective seeing really is. We really do understand that the list of possible colors in infinite. Designers invent and reinvent new colors all the time to keep us buying; i.e. sage, eggplant and butterscotch. Naming and naming. Dividing and further dividing. Yet, in college sociology class, I learned of a primitive tribe that had only two naming words for color. Of course, I cannot recall the exact words, but I would guess that they might have meant warm-ish and cool-ish. Red, orange and yellow are warmish. Blue, indigo and violet are coolish. Green is a swing middle-initial. Even though all hues can be altered to a warm end or a cool end, each has its innate temperature property. I love simplification. And often, I think that the color temperature notion is a better way to approach a painting....that way we don't get caught up in all of those divisions. I think that we should be able to declare either warm-dominance or cool-dominance before we begin....that depending on the subject matter. Dominance is important for harmony and is a key design principle. Using like amounts of warms and cools results in a static feeling...not near as visually interesting! (a clear case for assymmetry of all kinds).