A study in reds

I was thinking of this as a cushion cover. I chose red for this picture from my Johanna Basford book (Enchanted Forest) because it gives a wide spectrum to play around with - from the deep Tuscan Red at the bottom left-hand corner through to the bright Poppy Red and oranges and even yellows.

Done, another exercise in keeping to just one color and its related shades.

The two birds were rendered in blue and blue-green for the sake of contrast, because the flowers in that part of the picture were orangey; it's where I chose to make the spot where the light hits.

A brass compass

I picked this image out of Johanna Basford's Enchanted Forest book to have a go at coloring metal, highly-reflective metal.

I worked with a deep brown (Espresso), moss green and a lemon yellow to capture the highlights and dark reflections. I turned to the Internet's stock photos of brass compasses for reference photos to see the play of light and dark.

For the ring of plants and animals surrounding the compass, I continued my exercise in limiting the color palette, this time to greys - cool greys, warm greys, French greys, sage green, slate grey and some browns. The only pops of color come from the blackberries (at left) and red fox (at 1 o'clock).

Not a sterling result, I think. More practice needed for metal.

Limiting the palette on each work

I've seen the gamut in color pencil works online - those that throw every color of the rainbow in and those that seem more studied in limiting the colors used. Fine, I guess there's no "right" and "wrong", but I wanted to give the latter style a try, as an exercise in picking the colors that work together and yes, discipline as well.

The following works are the result. (The hedgehog got several "likes" on my Instagram feed.)

Hedgehog with autumnal palette of leaves. All earthy shades.

A palette of cool blues and blue-greens, with white flowers
 (my favorite!) and some chartreuse accents.

Browns for the squirrel, with red bits in the tail for accent.
The plants were kept to an autumnal palette that played off the
browns on the squirrel. 

There is really no need to go hog wild with color all the time. A little restraint is good as well. I've seen entire pages of leaves and flowers done in only white and blues, recalling the splendor of Ming vases.

A clan crest from the realm of fantasy

Another picture from my Johanna Basford Enchanted Forest book. I'm not moving through the book in order, but picking pictures that I want to do.

I went for this because of the sword, thinking it would be an exercise in coloring metal. From my readings here and there, metal, being highly reflective, is rendered by highly contrasting shades, say black (or dark grey) and white, sitting starkly next to each other. And any other color that appears on the surface would come from reflection of objects nearby.

But this sword is pretty small, and so gives little opportunity to introduce any other color.  I decided to stick with black and white.

It. Didn't. Quite. Work. Did it?

The rest of the picture... well, it was a matter of sticking to a palette of greens and not straying too far from that. Nearer the bottom, warm greens, orange, beige, brown. Nearer the top, a cool, silvery green sits below the two birds, done in blue/green/red.

Peacock

I'm on a roll.

Still on my Harmony of Colours book (Book 4), I went to the page with the peacock, treating this as another exercise in playing with color.

Plan: To use blues/greens/teal and deep purples/pinks on the bird, and, in order for it to pop out from the rather busy background, I wanted the background to be in muted earth tones.

Result:  I think the plan worked?

 

A color-corrected lion

My (mis)adventures in playing with color continue.

I went back to my Harmony of Colours book (Book 4) over the weekend and picked out the lion to work on with my Prismacolor set. In my head, I envisioned a pair of flashing eyes in a strong color, the face in shades of warm browns, and the mane, also in shades of warm brown, but lighter.

It didn't quite turn out like that. I mean, I got the flashing eyes all right. And even did a commendable job (Ithink!) on the "emerald" jewels on the lion's forehead. But the choice of color for the face and the mane didn't quite work so well.

In fact, it was a disaster in need of correction at a subsequent coloring session. The face was at first done in browns that were too reddish and to clayey for a lion. Then I compounded the mistake by doing the mane in ... yes, lighter, colors, but the wrong lighter colors.

When I was done, the lion didn't look anything like a majestic beast of the Serengeti. Its mane came out in streaks of Canary Yellow and Pumpkin Orange. Definitely a ginger lion, haha. And then the yellows and orange clashed with the warm reddish browns near the face.

On my next slot of two hours of free time available, I set about doing a color correct. Added Sepia (a deep brown) and 70% French grey to tone down and deepen the too-raw orange and yellow respectively, and then added Golden Rod to tone down/add yellow to the too-red browns and too-grey French greys.

The following was the result:

The yellows are still arguably too yellow.
but you should see the original.
This was supposed to have been a dignified, tawny
colored beast, ruler of the African plains.
Sigh. Sorry. 

Hipster hippo

I was halfway through coloring this hippo when I found those color palettes online (see previous post), and realised I should have probably used a more limited palette.

This picture uses gradation of Tuscan red/pink/light brown,  purple/pink and blue/green, along with vermillion and a couple other shades of brown.

Still too many colors? 

I wouldn't say it's a disaster. After I checked out the online color palettes, I decided to use the Tuscan red/pink/light brown combo on more areas in the body of the hippo (as opposed to going with still other colors). As a result, the combo still shines through, instead of being overwhelmed by the strong green bands.

I have to work at using fewer colors in my next few outings. The other day, I saw an online work of an owl that used only three or four shades of grey, black, white and a deep orange for the eyes. The effect was understated, sophisticated, and the eyes really popped in the monochromatic palette.