Sunday, April 17, 2011

Vinca - More Color Work

Today I thought I'd try to shape up leaf color. My early attempts came in too saturated and too light. After switching to Phalo Greens and Cadmium Orange, those fearful thoughts that I would never find the color slipped away. Although not yet right on, I think I'm getting close to color mixes that will work. Additionally, these green mixes lift nicely for veining.

There is a considerable color difference between the front and back of the leaf and viridian with cad orange seems appropriate for the backside.

Also tried Ultramarine Violet instead of Dioxizine Violet for the flower--not sure about that yet. Either way, I'm shading and highlighting with Ultramarine Blue and Permanent Rose respectively.

So now, I can clean my little palettes and start over with a lot less paints as I try to tune in my colors.



4 comments:

  1. Lots of questions and answers with these pieces, both for you and me.
    I loved the four flowers yesterday (day before-losing track of time and time zones!)The colour and shading are lovely. I was struggling with a similar shade for the bluebells in the woods here. Dioxazine violet seems to nail it, colour monitor variations taken into account.
    Your leaf colour choices are interesting too. Greens and greys fascinate me. Neither of your green mixes are ones I've tried but they produce rich and yet subtle results.
    Love the new header too!

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  2. I love the new header too; funny though, as the page was loading, I knew something looked different but I couldn't quite figure out why- I though it was the header but wasn't convinced until I read Judith's comment!
    I don't think I have ever tried your green color mixes and will have to sit down later and dabble a bit, not that we have any color around here yet- but I did hear a few wood frogs yesterday and ONE solitary peeper; there's hope!

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  3. Hi Judith,

    I was looking for a copy of the old header, as I was simply going to trim off some saturation, when this one came up. Forgot all about assembling it some time ago. So, I removed most of the color and messed with the title font.

    Then tied the links and headers to more muted tones.

    I'm playing with webfonts--these are from Google Fonts. Not bad but I'm looking at some gorgeous stuff for when I move to Wordpress. I plan to host my own fonts at that time.

    Dioxazine violet is areal winner, isn't it? I'll be playing more today, after I rake some of last year's leaves that were well hidden until the snow melted!

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  4. Hi Gretchen,

    As you can see from my comment to Judith, there have been a few subtle changes on the blog. I am exploring web typography and the blog is becoming my guinea pig. :-)

    I am going to further explore my green mixes. The opaqueness of the cadmiums has me thinking of a more transparent neutralizer, perhaps in the quinacridone family. More on that in my post later today.

    Congratulations! Signs of Spring!!! Woohoo!!! :-)

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