Today’s watercolor experiment:

Yesterday, I used orange and its compliment blue, to render a school of goldfish (if a threesome can be considered a school). Today, I thought I could use that scheme, color and its complement, with another pair of colors. I chose yellow and purple.

I had to find another subject as amenable to the new color scheme as the goldfish and the rocks were to the orange and blue combination. I wracked my brains for a bit. The best I could come up with, was a forest full of yellow canaries. The pure yellow would pop forward while the gradual addition of purple that I planned to use for tree branches would give the illusion of recession into the background.

Here is the result:

Yellow Birds
4.75″x6.5″ Watercolor Paper

Not as stellar a result as the goldfish pond. It looks like pretty messy, in fact. But with a little more work (i.e., better overall graphic design of bird figures and background and a better choice of a particular yellows and purples), I could get this to work. I’m glad I used a small format paper for my first attempt.

Another experiment:

Since the goldfish pond seemed to work so well, I had another go at it today. I did several things differently: 1) Graphic design: more rocks, some overlapping; goldfish pointed in one direction; 2) Different combination for orange: English yellow and cadmium red light; 3) Different blues: Cobalt teal and Cobalt turquoise.

Process:

The principle involved here was to begin with the purest orange and, with each successive glaze, add a bit of blue to mute it. In other words, each wash would be less saturated with color than the previous one. My understanding is that the most saturated washes would appear near the surface while the more muted, most unsaturated colors would recede into the distance. I did have a bit of difficulty in choosing the appropriate saturation for local washes of the submerged rocks.

Goldfish and Rocks
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

Comment:

I like this composition and I feel it is mostly successful.

I would benefit from a more systematic approach to investigate the behavior of pigments and their complements.  Before I began painting pictures, my approach to colors was very systematic. I would paint a paint chip for each of the colors in my paint box. I ended up with a 3-inch-thick binder of chips. I would gradually add white to each color, and black to each color to see the progression of value ranges from lightest to darkness. I would test some colors with different complements to see the proper canceling of tones resulting in a neutral gray and the failures, resulting in a muddy brown.

Now would be a good time to return to the basics. I would like to return to my goldfish, and even my canaries after doing so.