When Colors Go Wrong

I’ve missed painting recently while I’ve been working on figure drawing so I was glad to get back to my easel and eager to try painting more trees. For this painting, I played around with a few different colors, and in the end, they really didn’t play well together.

I do like the Prussian blue I used in the sky, and I think I also like the color I mixed for the dark mountain areas. After that, though, my colors all seemed to go wrong.

 

I’m calling it Indian Summer for two reasons. It’s a time of year I love, when summer’s warmth returns for a short time in late September or early October. To capture that warm feeling, I used Indian Red, although it got a little overpowering.

Note: The streaks in the sky aren’t really there. Those streaks are reflections from the glass in the china cabinet near where I paint.

I’m still in the process of creating my own personal color palette, learning what colors I most love to use and which ones don’t really seem to work for me.

Although I made a lot of my usual mistakes in this painting, overall I think I’m fairly pleased with it — except for the color choices. Part of my problem is that I grab tubes of paint on a whim rather than taking time to plan my colors before I begin. Still being new to painting, I find it fun to try different color combinations for no other reason than just to see what happens. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

All in all, I’d like to believe I’m making progress. It is a process, and I have so much more to learn. And even when things don’t work quite the way I’d hoped, I’m still having fun and enjoying my painting time.