Sylvia‘s Art Journey

The colour in my watercolour set I have used the least is PR101 - English red / Venetian red. It was in my original standard set. It’s certainly good for painting terracotta objects or red bricks, but what else? If I want a redish brown I can use a more neutral brown like sepia or burnt umber and mix in a little warm red. What to use it for? So, I have gone ahead and mixed it with most of the colours in my palette. I tried to add just a touch of it to the respective colour and also to get a reasonable hue. Here are the results. Mixing colours from top to bottom and left to right are: buff titanium, jaune brilliant dark, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow medium, permanent red orange, cadmium red light, ruby red, ultramarine, helio cerulean, brilliant green (phtalo green), sap green, green earth, may green, yellow raw ochre, burnt umber.  Well, I will keep it in my palette as long as it lasts, mainly mixing it with the burnt umber here or there. The mixes with the reds are not bad, either...

 During the next weeks I should not experience a lack of inspiration. Today, a two week free mixed media workshop started online. Another online workshop will start at the end of May, Sketchbook Revival. Not all sessions of these workshops will interest me enough to create, but I will certainly get something out of them.  Also I was notified that a book I suggested to my library will be purchased, so I can get it soon. It is filled with cute drawing and watercolour projects. 

 I have borrowed a book from the library with 20 step by step tutorials. The projects are lovely creative illustrations. They allow me to combine drawing and painting. Three pieces are already done. More to follow. I wouldn’t want to do this all the time, making what others suggest. Normally, I like to do my own thing. But I like not having to search for inspiration for a change. Just deciding what project to do next. I also allow myself to change small details. After this I plan to ask the library to buy another, similar book for me to borrow. 

I love working in sketchbooks. I start on the first page and fill it in order from front to back. I always date my pages. My sketchbooks are numbered. They are like chronological albums. The insides of the covers are decorated with pretty stickers. Right now I have a watercolour sketchbook and one with drawing paper.  And no, I don't have fear of the first page.  There are so many more pages to fill. Some will turn out great, some less so, and that's fine. I mainly draw and paint at the weekend. I am not an artist who creates stuff that takes many hours to complete. My subjects vary. There’s not that one thing I do. Apart from not being into portraits and characters, almost anything can appear in my sketchbooks. I like to draw realistically, but have also started to experiment with some partly abstract pieces. I do this for myself, so I am free to create what I like. I want my work to be good and beautiful, but the process is what matters.

 I haven’t been here for a while - or so I thought. I wasn’t aware that it was that long. Anyway, I still draw and paint. Still filling sketchbooks. Not much has changed in the meantime. I have started buying watercolours in tubes, but then fill them in pans, gradually changing my colour palette a bit.  My command of watercolour has certainly improved. Learning by doing is essential.  I will see if I find something to write here again every now and then. 

I‘ve been thinking more about cool and warm blues.  Let’s take the colour wheel and put that pure blue at the bottom, just for practical reasons. This pure blue is the coolest of the cool, super cool. On the opposite side we habe orange, this should then be the warmest. On the top left and top right we have pure red and pure yellow. They are warm, I would say equally warm, judging from their distance from the orange. No one doubts that if you put even a little bit of blue into that pure red or that pure yellow you cool them down. If you put some yellow into the red or vice versa, you make them warmer. So you can always say if, for example, a red is warm relative to pure red or cool relative to pure red. This is easy.  But for the blue it means that if you put a little red or a little yellow in it you make the blue warmer, because both red and yellow are warm colours. So relative to pure blue all other blues are warm blues. So you can only say if one blue is cooler or warmer th...

There is a problem with using the terms cool colours and warm colours when explaining colour mixing. Some people consider a blue that leans towards red a warm blue and a blue that leans towards green a cool blue. I am not sure why they do so, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Blue is considered a cool colour. If you mix in a warm colour like red, it gets warmer. If you mix in another cool colour like green it doesn’t get warmer, but stays cool. The good thing is that these labels aren’t important when deciding what colours to mix to get a certain effect. You just have to have a look at the colour wheel. Mixing colours that are far away from each other results in dull, muddy colours. Mixing colours that are close together results in brilliant colours. Both effects can be just what you want. Some people mix their browns and greys by mixing complementary colours.