Tree Glow

Tree Glow
Watercolor, 4 x 6"
$85
to purchase this painting, email me

Today's post is on the evolution of a color idea.

When I was actively writing and performing my songs, touring as a singer and guitarist, and regularly being interviewed by journalists and radio DJs, one of the inevitable questions was "Which comes first? The words or the music?" Unless you're a team with particular roles, like Rogers and Hart, there's no real set answer. Sometimes an overheard phrase suggests a lyric which suggests a musical idea. Or, after some noodling around on a guitar part, a lyric idea might arise. Or a story idea comes along suggesting some relevant lyrics, they're set to music and a song grows from there. Or a guitar instrumental suggests a character or a scene and a song grows from that. The mysterious beginnings of an idea are wholly dependent upon the work of development.

I write all this because my process with these landscape paintings is not so dissimilar. Do I start with an idea of form or color or place or weather or what? There's usually some notion that triggers the development of each new painting. Often, several ideas come together at the same time — difficult to tease apart.

Although I'll sometimes just plunge right in and see where the painting leads me — and that approach can produce some very exciting results — it's as much a crap shoot as anything. Regardless of how I start an actual painting, it's really critical that I have my colors together first.

So I like starting with a limited palette of 3 to 5 colors that I first test in little studies. These limited palettes are often suggested by something I see in nature and make note of during the course of a day, or some combined splash in a magazine or in an historic painting. When I'm stuck, I reach for my book of notes on color combos from previous paintings, or for my stack of pre-tested swatches that I've collected from scraps over the past couple of years.

In the case of today's study, I was cleaning out the supply room (a never-ending process), and found a scrap of newsprint I'd scribbled on with charcoal and pastel. Wow - interesting colors.... a lime green, deep violet and yellow orange. I wonder how they'd work in a painting....



So I selected these tubes: Daniel Smith Imperial Purple, Rose of Ultramarine, Green Gold, Serpentine, Goethite amd M. Graham Cadmium Yellow. Then, made a little swatch test with some of those:




Hmmm... looks like there's some red in there. As orderly as I try to be, in the throes of painting, sometimes I'll just need that one more color and forget to make a note of what it is. Looks like I did that here! And from this swatch, I next made the color study you see at the head of this post.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to show this little evolution. Tomorrow or the next day, I'll post the finished painting that came out of these.

More!

Because of the first comments I've received and knowing that you all have not been following along since the beginning or understand the links between My Great Day blog and Landscape into Art, you might want to visit my postings on Materials and Process at My Great Day. In them, I talk more about my own process, let other artists I admire talk about their process, and show my materials and where I work.

Be sure to visit My Great Day where we're celebrating Helen Frankenthaler's birthday!