Into the Deep Purple

Amethyst Heart

 Even though it is my favorite color, I don't have a lot of tubes of purple paint in my paint box simply because it is a "secondary color" and it is often easy to mix a wide range of lovely shades from red and blue.

I do have a couple pre-mixed purple paints that I consider absolutely essential though, Dioxizine purple and Acra Violet. Dioxizine purple is a wonderfully deep, sheer purple, it mixes well with other colors and adds shadowy depth. I especially like it for painting dark purple irises. Acra Violet, is an incredibly versatile red purple that can add so much vibrancy to a range of flowers from red, pink and purple.

Arranging my purple paints from cool to warm.

Since I am exploring what the paints in my paintbox can do, I wanted to test out mixing my red and blues to see what kind of variety of purples were possible. I had to start with classifying my reds from cool to warmest so I would know where to start. I already tested out all the blues, see the "Shades of Blue" blog post from January. Again, I learned you can't judge a color by it's paint tube, some reds I thought were more cool were actually more warm, and visa-versa. After I painted a swatch of color onto paper, it was much easier to classify once I could see the colors next to each other.

Re-arranging my red paints from cool to warm.

 

My blue paints arranged cool to warm.

After I sorted my red colors, I mixed my coolest red and coolest blue, then warmest red and warmest blue to see what kind of range of purples I had. The biggest surprise for me was my two warmest colors yielded a dark gray that wasn't very purple at all! Good to know.

Comparing the extremes, coolest and warmest.

 Some of the my favorite purples were mixed from the middle range of warm red+blue or cool red+blue, not the extremes at either end.

Nice purple mixes, somewhere in the middle.

Next was the painting challenge, what subject could possibly suit this wide range of purples? Eventually I decided on an amethyst stone, which seemed very appropriate since it is often considered a traditional birthstone for February.

Amethyst Heart, first layers of paint.

 Although I was really happy that I was able to use almost all the shades of purple I mixed, including that surprising gray, I really felt like the painting could use more work. Adjusting the values would make it more unified and improve the illusion of a sparkling cut stone. I wrote this blog at the end of February and hoped to post it for that month, but I had to make a decision. Do I post the painting as is and on time, or do I improve the painting to how I envisioned it and post in March? What do you think? First heart above, finished heart below.

Amethyst Heart, finished!

I heard an interesting point of view recently from a person I admire, YouTube's Sci-Show host and creator, Hank Green. He said he is able to accomplish so many creative projects because he focuses on getting them to 80 percent perfect and then doesn't worry about that last 20 if it isn't necessary. He is right, that last 20 percent can take a surprising amount of time and may not even improve things that much!

At first I thought I could move forward and post a painting that I felt was at 80 percent, but eventually I chose not to. Even though I think the initial painting did illustrate what I was trying to accomplish, I honestly really wanted that last 20 percent!

Now I'm glad I waited because the finished painting makes me very happy when I look at it. I hope you will enjoy this sparkly purple heart in March as much as I do.

Happy creating!

>^-^<

Tina

 

Full page view of my color tests, 8.5 x 5.5 inch notebook.