Sunday, May 23, 2010

Iris Painting Final


Second Wash Iris Painting

Finished Painting
5x7" on Arches 300lb. coldpress paper

Original Photo

A word about color:

The most common thing I hear about my paintings is about color... How the painting comes together and has a harmony of color. I think this is true. One of the ways I look to make this happen is in the planning. The flower is purple/blue and the background is yellow/green. For me the common thread was the blue in the flower and the blue in the green of the background. for both I used ultramarine blue. Hints of the yellow are also used in the flower and a little of the purple is glazed into the background to darken it. So by limiting the colors I have gotten an image that is held together by its colors. Anyway that is how I have learned to approach color.

How do you manage the color in your paintings to get the most out of them?

Keep Makin' Art
Carl

7 comments:

Jo said...

Omigoodness, Carl, your painting is so absolutely exquisitely beautiful...! Omigoodness! The photograph pales in comparison.

Oh, goodness!

Janice Thomson said...

Carl that iris is a beauty - you have captured its essence perfectly.
I am one of those who very much like your colour combinations and appreciate your choices.

Lots has been happening with your work Carl! I've had fun browsing.

I too have been getting numerous spams from Japanese bots on the art blog.

Carl said...

Jo - Thanks as always for your support.

JANICE!- Welcome back! So glad to hear form you. Thanks for your comments.

Dave King said...

The colour, yes, but the tones as well. That's very subtle and sensitive painting. The other that aspect that appeals is its freshness. Excellent work.

Carl said...

Thank You Dave - Freshness is the toughest part to get in watercolor. We naturally think of fresh and spontaneous together. After a while I learned (at least ) for my paintings to be fresh I have to plan ahead so I can be free to paint. I'm not sure that makes sense and was counter-intuitive to how I started painting.
Carl

JeannetteLS said...

Beautiful and arresting, just as iris are in real life. To me, photos don't tend to capture that, but an artist's interpretation does. I am such a novice at painting, and the way I learned was primarily through osmosis--watching my sister approach color.

I think that I look at the inspiration shot(s) and immediately write down what color I think of the shot as... it's my rainbow shot. My cobalt. Flames. Autumn chaos. As a writer, I sort of title by color impressions, which also tell me the emotion.

Beyond that, only recently have I begun to play with idea of what to do with COLOR to make my focal points pop more, or emerge as I want. I experiment a lot becuase I tend to paint tissues and some handmade papers in advance. Many of them for one painting, and then I play with them, to see what I want. Oftne my background will be an opposite color, or an incredibly minimal wash of a complementary color.

Oh, I don't know. BUT, I love it when you ASK, because it forces me to THINK about how I approach things. I have so much to learn! It's fun.

Again, Carl, the iris is just beautiful and in part, for me, because of the FLOW of color in th ebackground. That teal/turquoise leads me to the flower and then it is grounded in the darker shades at the bottom, which emphasize its shape, to me.

It seems to me a lot of what you do with background color involves planning the SHAPE of those colors and how they will flow into and away from your object. Does that make sense?

Carl said...

Hi Jeannette-

I use the trick of writing colors and emotions too when I sketch in the field. I do this mostly on the cape, but need to spend some time doing this out in the woods too. My sketchbooks look very different from my finished paintings... They have a freshness and whimsy that does not totally translate in the studio.

I like talking about the process of making art. It helps me to start recognize the steps and start to figure out if there is something else I should be trying.

Thanks for the ever so kind words about my painting.

CS