Fuchsia Fandango

"Fuchsia Fandango" 8x8 oil on museum quality linen panel

 Click to Bid on Fuchsia Fandango--SOLD

Happy Friday all! I had a blast painting a Peace rose earlier this week for the DPW rose painting challenge-- and am already looking forward to my next rose--but in the meantime I wanted to try a a different type of flower.  

I spotted this vibrant fuchsia at my local nursery and loved the strong yellow-green leaves/cool pink complementary color combo along with the warmth of the clay pot. In this floral oil painting, I also set out to capture the unusual greenhouse light as well as harmonizing the powerful tropical colors. 


Today's Painting Tip: Use a Key Color for Stress Free Color Harmony
Whether you’re painting an abstract or a representational subject, a simple way to achieve better color harmony is to add one key “mother color” into ALL your color mixes. For example, if you’re painting pinkish flowers and using Permanent Rose or Quin Magenta add a tiny amount of it (think tip of knife) into all your oranges, violets, grays, browns, etc 

This “mother color” approach works particularly well for mixing your greens. Greens that have a touch of a warmer mother color will usually look a bit more natural and/or neutral which in turn will help support your higher intensity colors.

Working with a “mother color” as an approach is also a great way to become familiar with all the properties of that one particular pigment—how strong it is, how transparent it is, what kind of neutrals it makes, how it tints with white, etc.

Quick thanks again to all my new DPW collectors this month--I greatly appreciate your bids and the support of all the artists on DPW. Have a colorful and harmonious weekend.

Color HarMonday

Looking for a relaxing and fun painting class? I teach students as individuals or in pairs in the comfort of my home studio. I work with students from beginner to advanced in watercolor, oils, and acrylics.

For more information about my painting classes (located in Central Denver), please send me a note at ScarletOwl@hotmail.com.

As a painter who loves to work with color, I'm always seeking an appealing and satisfying color harmony. One simple way to achieve this is discipline. I've learned over the years to work with a limited palette.

I tell my students a good way to start is to pick 1 or 2 primaries (reds, blues, yellows) and a white. From there, you can easily create what I call these color harmony boards. I always find that they give me ideas and inspiration for colors that I would have not considered before. As an organic painter, I like these rather random circles of colors but you could certainly make a grid of squares, etc. if you want to be more organized about it.

In this example, planning for a landscape oil painting, I had the student start with three primary pigment circles: Cad Yellow Light, Ultramarine Blue, and Alizarin Crimson. Tip: Be sure to label the back of your board with exact colors, paint brands, etc. in case you want to refer to at a later date.

Then we mixed "around the color wheel" making orange, red-orange, violet, red-violet, green, an blue violet. Then each of those hues was mixed with white which is the tint of that color. Finally, we mixed all the colors together for what I call the "magic" neutral (it's the brownish circle here). A "trick" I often use is to use this "magic" neutral somewhere in the painting at the end to tie all the colors together.

Note too that three pigments plus white give us a stunning range of harmonious colors and values from dark violet to creamy light yellow (I call this lemon meringue). Almost immediately I get ideas from this for an abstract as well as landscape. Happy painting and have a great week!