Today’s warmup:

I continued with variegated washes today. Below are 4 panels that look very similar to those in Lesson 4.

In the top left panel I used ultramarine blue, lemon yellow and cadmium red light as washes on the upper portion and a line of my gray mixture (cobalt blue and cadmium red light) along the bottom 1/3 of the paper.

In the top right panel, I experimented with cerulean blue and cadmium red and lemon yellow. The mixing of cerulean blue and the red resulted in a dirtyish color – not even purple. The cerulean blue seems to have precipitated into the pits of the paper.

The lower left panel panel reveals what happens when cerulean blue, carmine red and lemon yellow merge. I like the yellow/red combination and the blue/red combination makes a passable if not faint purple.

The point of the lower right panel was to see the effect of Prussian blue on carmine red and lemon yellow. However, I did not use enough color (or water) to truly see the mixing. What I did see was the beautiful way that Prussian blue spreads out on a wet field.

Variegated Washes, Different Colors

There are so many variables to consider when playing with washes. One way to abbreviate the experimentation is to research the colors used by the masters and manipulate those pigments on the paper.