Here's a sneak
peek at a great upcoming watercolor blog by artist and instructor Robert
Reynolds on the importance of color and how personal choosing pigments can be.
And after you are done, be sure to check out the new book, Watercolor Unleashed (sounds thrilling, no?) for more watercolor
painting techniques. Enjoy!
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Autumn Leaves by Robert Reynolds
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Is color
important in a work of art? Most would say a loud yes! However, look at the
wonderful work of the great, late artist, Andrew Wyeth. His dad, the famous
illustrator N. C. Wyeth, was often telling Andrew that he needed to put more
color in his paintings. However, Andrew continued with his low-color paintings
that have become a landmark in his beautiful work. The feeling that he puts
into his work reaches out and grabs one's soul. So obviously, "color"
is a personal matter.
For me, my
interests in color have fluctuated over the years, and my watercolor painting
palette has changed in many ways during that time. For example, I used to
include ivory black in my basic palette, but today I rarely use black, mainly
because it doesn't produce the lively shadow tones and low-intensity colors
that I now create with other pigments. I also rely less on earth colors such as
burnt sienna and burnt umber, because they seem too "heavy" in
capturing the light and the airy feelings of sky, clouds, fog, and mist.
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Lakeside Azaleas by Robert Reynolds.
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My basic
watercolor palette adds up
to about 15 colors, and I do add other colors when I feel the need to do so.
But in general, whenever I paint, I simply try to be conscious of which colors
are staining colors. For example, at one time I relied on a mixture of hooker's
green dark and alizarin crimson when creating the effect of tree foliage. The
interplay of both colors did create beautiful foliage. However, the colors
seemed to lock themselves into the paper. It was difficult to remove the
mixture colors from the paper, which I do quite often.
Because of this issue, I began to
use mixtures of blues and yellows to create my own greens. On the whole,
however, there's no reason to avoid staining colors. They pose no
insurmountable difficulties for experienced watercolorists and can be quite
useful when an area needs to be glazed with a second color without lifting the
first color in the process. Quite often, for example, I'll use alizarin crimson
as a glazing color to unify a number of elements in my watercolor works.
More soon,
Robert