Painting With Six Colors

From lower right, going clockwise:

Cadmium Lemon
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Red Medium
Quinacridone Rose
Ultramarine Blue
Cerulean Blue

People kept asking me, "Are you painting?" and I would reply, "No.  Not at the moment."  To which they'd say, "That's what you said last time I asked."  True.  For some reason, I stopped painting.  Well, yes, it began a few years back when I got a frozen shoulder and couldn't move my right arm very well.  Then I had the inspiration to turn some of my already-finished paintings into note cards.  That wasn't as successful as I hoped.  When a fire in town closed the last shop that showed an interest in carrying them, I decided to switch to photography ... especially for this blog.  Fun.  But, still, it's not painting.

I've heard of writer's block but not painter's block.  I couldn't seem to get myself INTO it!  I re-arranged my art room (twice).  I bought a couple of beautiful Afghani carpets to put in it to inspire me.  I sorted through my paints, my portfolios, tossed out old work, but I still couldn't get going.  Then, this autumn I decided to take an art class so I'd be forced to paint ... so chose a still life class in watercolor.  I love watercolor.  And still life was fine with me--it lets you stay indoors--no hauling equipment outside, no shifting of light and shadow, no potential rain, no bugs, no sunscreen, or (conversely) painting with mittens as I once did in Scotland.

So I signed up largely for the discipline of having to show up each week and produce something ... but, of course, the instruction and critiques are always valuable.

Though I took my paint box with me early on (and dipped into it now and again), it turned out the teacher provided the paints, wanting us to try out using only the six listed above (Da Vinci brand).  In fact, they produce all the colors you need.  A good grey comes by combining complementary colors. As for greens, oranges, purples, browns, just dip in and work your own mixing magic.  Black can be a bit iffy but try mixing the three primary colors together.  (I do like the six-color approach and want to continue working with it but need to say that though all the photos here are a result of the class, the apple with green leaves was augmented with a few colors from my paint box.)

So it's all great fun.  And I'm reviewing complementary colors, split complements, analogous colors.  Color bouncing from an object to its near neighbor.  Plus the wet-on-wet technique.
  

The colors I mixed for one particular painting.

The teacher set out a selection of autumn props from which we could choose our subjects.  Apples, leaves, peppers, miniature pumpkins, squashes, plums, pears, onions ...

A quick study in complements:  yellows and purple

A little purple in the apple, a little red in the pepper dropped in when still wet

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