Discovering online color palettes

In my previous post, I moaned about not seeming to be able to find groups of colors that "go" together. Yes, over time, I have come to realise - rather organically - that I ought not mix warm and cool colors together within a picture.

For example, I may use oranges, warm pinks, peach and even deep warm reds on a fish (see picture in the previous post), but in a picture with more than one fish, I might render another fish in a cool palette - icy blue, deep blue and even teal and cool grey (never warm or French grey).

But, as I lamented in my last post, I have a beautiful set of 150 Prismacolor pencils, and yet sometimes struggle to find colors that "sing' together in proximity. Yes, I'm aware of the color wheel, one rule of which is that complementary colors - those facing each other on the wheel - go together. Hence, yellow-purple, red-green, blue-orange and so on.

Two nights ago, I searched "color palettes" on my Pinterest feed and lo and behold, was shown several feeds, including the websites Design Seeds and Color Collective.  Both are beautifully designed, navigable websites set up principally for designers and "those who love color". They offer bold new palettes of color drawn from the colors appearing in color-balanced photographs (ranging from landscapes to cupcakes).

As an aside, many palettes draw inspiration from nature. Crashing waves on a seashore offer a palette of teals, blues, greens, yellow (from the incandescent light) and dove greys. A photo of succulent cactuses creates a palette of dusty pink, lilac, dull greens and frosty light greys.

When I am taken by a color pencil work, it is almost always as much about the choice of color as it is about technique in rendering those colors to show texture. One can't just fill in a picture with colors chosen at random. All you will get is a picture that looks wrong, out of whack.

Exhibit A: I don't know what I was thinking with this

disappointing work. Red and cool blues,

together with browns and warm pinks?? The

wrong colors were the very reason this work was abandoned.

One picture that I saved to my Pinterest board titled "Learn Color Pencil Art" is this one below. It had not yet been completed when it was uploaded by the artist to Pinterest, but I can tell it is going to be a winner.

It's all in the choice of color, baby. 

 

Fish

I returned to my Harmony of Colours book this week and found a drawing of a few large fish, and decided that I would colour them like the light was coming from the top, the surface of the water, so the tops of their bodies would be lighter than their lower halves. 

I admit I devoted more attention to the blue fish, the first one I did on this page. The rest were done cursorily, which explains why the (attempt at) iridescence isn't as apparent in the others. 

I find it ironic that, with my box of 150 Prismacolor pencils, I find myself bemoaning that I don't have "enough" color options. That shouldn't be the case. I'm just not thinking hard enough about how colors can "go" together, even the colors that one doesn't normally reach for from the get-go. 

Looking at others' coloring book works, I see some getting really creative about using various shades of one color, producing largely monochromatic pieces, or putting contrasting colors that I didn't think to mash together. 

A tentative first brush with watercolor pencils

This was done with my Derwent watercolor pencil set of 24. I decided to be disciplined about my choice of colors and keep to a palette of earth tones - mostly three shades of browns, oranges, warm pink, yellows and some greens. I wanted the eyes to pop, so picked the strongest green there.

The process of wetting the paper didn't go so well. I used the second finest brush I have (of my four), and applied it only to those parts of the drawing that had clear gradations of color, such as the tiger-stripe part on the sides of the nose, the irises and eye lids. I left the rest of the color pencil parts pretty much intact because the areas of color were mostly too small for the water color effect to show anyway.

The gradation from brown through orange to yellow on the bridge of the nose are mostly gone in the above "after" version - and i don't think that's a good thing. Did I apply too much water?

More research into handling watercolor pencils needed, and definitely, more practice.

Drawing fabric folds: a practice run

Sophie's birthday is round the corner, so her Godma decided to make a card to go with the bag of goodies. Godma figured she needed the practice and challenge of rendering fur and fabric. One can do only so many pages of coloring books drawn by other people!

I copied the drawing of a dreamy-looking mouse from a Pinterest post I saw, but the post was in black and white, so the color choices of the animal and clothing are mine. I used the black and white picture - and all its shades of grey - as reference for the subtle shades of the folds in the blue-denim overalls, red undershirt and yellow scarf.

I used my Derwent periwinkle blue and my lighter Prismacolor powder blue, as well as a 70% cool grey for darker areas of the denim. White was used on the tops of the folds catching the light, accented by ink from my white gel pen. The red shirt was done with a combo of poppy red (base color), Tuscan red and two shades of orange.

I also tried to make the mouse look furry. This entailed putting down a base color of light brown and then overlaying it with light strokes of darker brown and warm grey.

Godma is not entirely satisfied; this could have been better. Surely the way denim catches the light and the way cotton (I presume the red shirt to be cotton!) does it are different? This was all done only by observation and instinct. My copy of Colored Pencil Painting Bible arrived last week, but haven't had a chance to browse through it or use it for reference.

The lettering was hand-drawn and colored in with my Towbow Dual-Brush Pens.   I don't feel confident enough yet to hand-write using the pens, showing the characteristic thick-thin strokes of brush lettering.

Sigh, so many things to learn, so little time. Work always gets in the way. I still haven't tried out my Derwent Water Color Pencils!!

From vase to my drawing pad

I bought a bunch of orange orchids with red spots two weeks ago, and decided to try drawing a bloom.

Half done. 

Actually, the single bloom - already past its prime and detached from the stem - deteriorated really quickly, so I had to throw it out. But by then, I had already done two petals or so. I put the bloom into my flower press and continued drawing the other three petals, basically without a reference object.

I put a layer of yellow first on the lightly-pencilled outlines, then put in the deep red spots, using Crimson Lake from my Derwent Artists set. They were a test of patience, and I had to keep my pencil point sharpened. 

I had to layer a medium grey over each spot - yes, each and every one, talk of tedium! - to give the red the greater depth required. 

Then I used orange and a light brown to give some shading to each petal, with the lighter parts in orange and the deeper bits, in brown.

This was an exercise in observation - how the red in the spots was picked up at the tips and bases of each petal. 

The centre part of the flower was very hurriedly done. For this, I Googled for a picture of this type of orchid and drew it from a reference picture. It's not very good - but I suppose it looks real enough and recognisable as one variety of orchid found in Singapore.

Another dragon!

From an Oriental, fire-breathing dragon (see last post here) to this cartoony cutie, complete with wings, which his Oriental cousin doesn't have.

I drew and colored this in 40 minutes for a birthday card. Having taken classes in cartooning some years ago, I'm familiar with the conventions of cartooning. I adapted this from a drawing I saw on the Internet, but the colors are all my own. I wanted them bright and cheery for Sammy, whose birthday will be celebrated this Sunday.

I should have put in more effort for the words above. It was nearing 3am and I admit I was looking to finish the job!

A dragon

This was off another page from Your Personal Wish Book by Asian geomancer Lillian Too, with illustrations by Jennifer Too.

Lillian's "commandment" on the page facing this drawing was to color the dragon, a Chinese symbol of strength and vitality, "in a color that resonates with you", and to render its "magical" scales with a glitter pen.

My tin of Derwent pencils, a set of 72, were out, so I used those instead of Prismacolors.

I went with purple, my favourite color, for the dragon, and layered it with green nearer the areas where the scales catch the light. Instead of glitter, I used my white gel pen to bring out the high whites in the bright areas.

For the head, I opted for strong reds, oranges and yellows. I picked a strong pea green for the spines through the creature's length.

As for the pearl: That caused some difficulty, and I'm not pleased with the result. I looked up some tutorials online, and they seemed to advise using contrasting shades of white and deep grey, and to layer the white in pink and mint green to bring out the luminescence. As you can see, it didn't quite work. I think the white I used wasn't white enough.

A rethink on the clouds: I should have done them in white, with some bluish shading, instead of using two pale shades of blue.

As for the rim of Chinoiserie patterns around the dragon, I did it quickly. The fine lines were quite a pain and a test of my patience. I only reminded myself to keep the colors muted so that the dragon, the main event, would pop.

The option for the rim pattern would have been to keep it monotone, probably in blue, in a nod to Ming blue-and-white pottery.

I put this on Instagram, and R says she thought it was a photograph of a porcelain plate. I guess this piece turned out ok overall.

But the pearl, the pearl, aaarrrggghhh!