Today’s watercolor experiment:

I have really been enjoying the Moonglow pigment, manufactured by Daniel Smith. Previous posts using this pigment include: Discontinuous Bird of Paradise, Concentric and Granulation. Its component pigments include ultramarine blue (PB29), Anthraquinoid Red (PR177) and Viridian green (PG18). As one might surmise, a mixture of the primary colors would tend to result in a brownish, or neutral color. The primary paint colors (i.e., colors that cannot be made from mixing other colors together) are red, blue and yellow.  Thus the brownish tint of Moonglow comes from the combination of blue, red and green, the latter of which is a combination of blue and yellow.

Today I used my 3.5″ brush to put down a wet layer of Moonglow on dry paper. Drippings of clear water and other pigments (quinacridone burnt orange, quinacridone red and aureolin yellow) caused the underlying pigment to give way. The drips spread out in a circle, leaving clear or tinted rivulets. If watercolor paper is very wet, the pigments underneath the spreading drip mix, and the spidery riverways are absorbed by the time the composition dries. In today’s composition the paper was not saturated when I introduced splashes of water and pigments. They did not mix fully with the Moonglow, therefore, the final (dry) watercolor retained some of the details of the streaming pigments.

Comment:

I’m getting some Thanksgiving spirit these days. It is getting darker, colder (by California standards), and the leaves are changing colors.  Today’s composition expresses these colors. The results of dripping water and pigments into the Moonglow background reminded me of starbursts, thus my choice for the name of today’s study.  The only non-random dripping of color was the three drips for Orion’s belt. His belt, and not his dagger.