Challenge for October: Painting with a limited palette

Our challenge this month, is to paint using only the colors red, blue, yellow and white.

I love color, especially all the luscious paint colors available, so this was rather confining for me.  To make it even a little more difficult, I chose to paint a scene without much color of any type.

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I was pleasantly surprised by the beautifully harmonious results.  The color, in this piece is very subtle, but none the less, I enjoy it!

Jonathan Livingston Seagull lives on!

I will be trying this technique again!

Carol Schiff

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This was a really fun challenge.  Limiting your colors is a great exercise because it forces you to mix colors and experiment.  I did 2 paintings.  My Teapot is using most of the colors just as they are, only the background is a mix I wouldn't have normally tried.  The Laundry painting has lots and lots of greens in it, this was the challenge.  If you really look at the greens you see lots of yellow, reds and blues.

Teapot

Laundry

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by Kathy Garvey
This was a good time for me to do a limited palette painting because after 50 years of using the same John Pike Palette and paints almost as old, I finally bought a new John Pike. I'm about to order all new watercolors from Ralph's Art Supply, but in the meantime I fished out my newest yellow, blue and red and added them to my brand new palette. The colors I used were Carr Yellow, Quinacridone Red and Joe's Blue.  The setup and start are shown in the image below. (Click to enlarge.)

I've just come back from three weeks in Virginia with a slew of oak leaf drawings and decided to paint a few of them for this challenge. I love the wide variety of shapes in oak leaves.

I painted the main leaf using mixes of all three colors on and off the palette. But for the three other leaves, I only painted with the primary color directly onto the paper. I stuck to blue and yellow for one, red and yellow for another and blue and red for another. Later I added the remaining color directly to the paper to make some shadows (or highlights in the case of the blue and red leaf).

Here's the end result. Chaotic, but colorful...just like Fall!

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Waterlily 

Oil 

Carmen Beecher

This was a real challenge because of the greens. Greens can be difficult enough without limiting the palette. Those bulb-looking things look like water hyacinths, which are very invasive, so I'm hoping they are something more friendly.

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Watercolor Sketch

by Jean Thomas

The goal here was to make believable facial tones using only three colors. My choices

were alizarin crimson, pthalo blue and burnt sienna. You can get tonal depth with a limited palette. A limited palette in watercolor can help keep your colors from getting muddy. The other secret is to layer on the color, waiting until each layer is dry before adding another. 

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And Now for a Totally Different Take on This Challenge

I have never been a particular fan of pointillism. This technique has always seemed to me just that: Multicolored little points or dots. However, there are a few paintings from the period which seem to me to have captured the spirit. One of those is Grand Canal (Venice) by Paul Signac. 

Nope. Didn't choose anything that grand. Decided to go with a simple, yet perfectly designed cup. Made it easy by choosing the one with the required colors. So here she is. (I forget. Is a cup masculine or feminine? Yep, she's definitely feminine. At least in French. Une tasse.) 

My Chosen Cup ... And My Dots: Une Tasse by Fay Picardi

                                                                           

                                                    

Challenge for May, Creating a Pattern from a Piece of Art

Kathy Garvey taught us how to create patterns from our paintings in Adobe Capture, and it was quite kaleidoscopic. It's a different kind of challenge.

This is the pattern I created:

 

Below is the original painting, a watercolor called "Cosmos (sold)."

 Carmen Beecher

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This was a really interesting challenge.  Here is my pattern with the original painting.  I would never have guessed I could make this pattern from this painting.  It was fun to play with.

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This was a sketch from one of my sketchbooks. So here goes with Adobe Capture.
I could see how these could be adapted to patterns on cloth.
Here is the pattern derived from the sketch, above.
Jean Thomas
Ozworks22@cfl.rr.com

I love making patterns so I was quite happy when the group agreed to give this challenge a try. Below are my patterns for this blog entry all created using a watercolor done on our recent trip to Silver Spring. The top image is of patterns created with Adobe Capture, a free and quite wonderful application available for your phone of Ipad. The second example is from Adobe Illustrator. I frequently use it or Adobe Photoshop for my patterns that I then print to fabric at Spoonflower.com. While Capture is fun and quick, it is limited to just a few kaleidoscope type options. The other two tools offer endless design possibilities. (Click on any image to enlarge it.)

Kathy Garvey

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Here Comes Another One (or two or more)

Not one of the techies in the group, I nonetheless gave Adobe Capture a try. Got a bit carried away. There are thousands of possibilities with just one photo. Here are two of my designs based on Kathy's extraordinary leaves and Denette's incredible painting. Lucky me.

 Try zooming in on the designs. I love how intricate they are. 

  Design 1

Design 2

Fay Picardi

Art Sale Saturday, Feb 10, 9-4

 

We will have a free raffle for a gift basket full of artsy items. We also will have oil paintings, watercolors, clay art, fabric art, pine needle baskets and smiling faces! Come on down!