Saturday, November 11, 2017

Finding Harmony

"Standing Proud"  Pastel  5 x 7 © Donna Gross
Available contact artist
I am still learning and sometimes struggling with creating harmony in color.
As I break out and begin to choose my own color palette instead of following the local color of the reference that I am painting, I forget to call on my trusting friend the color wheel.  
I open my box of yummy  pastels with so many different hues and values and dive right in ..choosing any color that strikes my fancy in that moment...and lately that has led to frustration and a feeling of incompetence....what to do?
Get back to basics. Have a plan...use the color wheel! The painting above started with no plan really. I just loved the color of the sky and built around that...this painting came from my imagination...not something I do often at all...but I became too attached to the turquoise of the sky without planning what to do with the tree or the water or the land!

My first unsatisfactory attempt at completion.  Not doing it for me.
I still didn't want to surrender my turquoise sky...To the color wheel I went and found a tertiary triad with turquoise in it and used the other colors in that triad. I finally settled on the finished piece at the beginning of this post above.  It feels more harmonious to me.

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