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| Yellow Sapphire painting |
Since I started an in-depth color by color exploration of the paints in my paintbox back in January of 2021, I've found it's quite a challenge to figure out a subject I can paint using only one color family. I bent the rules a bit this summer when I reveled in the color green while painting trees and grass, but I did not stick to the one color family rule.
Thirteen different yellows plus white.
I was able to use all my blues to make a believable night-time landscape, but I've found that painting nature believably generally requires at least a minimum of two colors, often the primary and it's complimentary color are necessary, except when it comes to recreating gems. So far, I've been able use this single color gem solution twice, once with purple and now happily with yellow.
The seven yellow paints I used to make my gem.
I wasn't certain at first if I could get some of the greenish yellow tones I would need, but combining burnt umber with a cool cadmium yellow light and some white was the answer. One of the best pieces of color mixing advice I ever received was to include burnt umber, which normally looks like a dark cool brown, in the yellow family.
Detail: burnt umber and gold variations.
I've learned so much doing these color swatch studies and find that I refer to them again and again when choosing colors for a painting. This time I learned that the two different brands of burnt umber I own look very different on paper, Liquitex brand is much cooler and the less expensive Daler-Rowney is much warmer. Also, I didn't know that adding white to the iridescent gold colors would make such pretty opaque cream colors. The shiny reflective quality goes away, but that cream color could be handy.
It takes a little extra time and effort, but I highly recommend going on this useful color exploration journey.
Happy Creating!
>^-^<
Tina
Links to my other single color family deep dives:
Into the Deep Purple
