"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Keeping Watch over the Rainbow Fruit

This was one of the projects this week at the Chris Leeper watercolor workshop.  His challenge on this one was to do a painting using 3 primary colors - a blue, a yellow and a red.  I used Pthalo Blue, Quindacridone Red, and Cadmium Yellow medium.   It is amazin that you can get such a wide range of colors with just 3 colors - even the saturated darks (which used a lot of paint! :)   We were allowed to select our own source pictures so I selected this still life from the reference library at WetCanvas.com.    After layering in the dark background, I found that I had to go back into the fruit and add more color because the dark background faded out the colors.  This is painted on Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper and is on 1/4 sheet of paper.

6 comments:

Autumn Leaves said...

This is beautiful, Barb! I think the additional layers of color to the fruit was an inspired move. They have a light from within now that just sets this piece apart!

Watercolors by Susan Roper said...

I would have been happy with "faded" fruit since that would have meant that the dark background made the fruit "pop". This rich color looks so right in this case, just a real old-master feel to it. You are just good!

Christiane Kingsley said...

Indeed, as Susan said, you are good, really good!!! And fast!
The fruit simply glow!

Barb Sailor said...

AutumnLeaves - thank you so much for saying that - I kept adding glaze after glaze and began to wonder if I was doing the right thing!

Barb Sailor said...

Susan - Thanks for being - always - so supportive! I was working for an old master feel to this!

Barb Sailor said...

Christiane - I must have used half of my paint up on this background - and not as fast as you think! (smile!)