Work in Progress – Ruth Armitage

This week in my Wednesday Watercolor class  we continued our focus on color. I shared some of my creative process with the class and with my newsletter subscribers. I have a bit more time to write now, so I will expound a bit more.

As is often the case, I chose colors for my painting that were similar to what I was wearing. It is uncanny to me how intuitive our color choices often are. One day we might feel like wearing more neutral colors, other days a vivid shade appeals to us. Some people are only comfortable wearing one type of color. I have a friend who wears ONLY subdued neutrals… black, grey, taupe, khaki.

I began this  demonstration painting by sketching some rough shapes in water soluble pencil. When painting abstractly, the shapes I choose are often representative of my subject. You’ll notice that the two light warm shapes on left and right are separated by a rather jagged white line. I thought of these two areas as representing two different points of view.

I worked using a desert triad for the first layers of color. I used Brown Madder Quin. (close to indian red) Manganese Blue (close to cerulean) and Raw Sienna (close to yellow ochre.) These subdued colors felt right to me, but I also wanted some strong contrast.

I painted around the white linear shapes. Then toward the end of the demo I added the cadmium oranges and reds, and pure black calligraphy.

The class was challenged s to use a color triad in their work, making sure to have a dominance of either warm or cool color.

When I got home, I worked on getting a bit more variation in the colors in the painting. I glazed over the oranges with French Vermillion (Sennelier) to strengthen them.  I also added more line work in the upper part of the painting using Golden’s High Flow Acrylic in white. I put it in a squeeze bottle with a fine point and it worked wonderfully for calligraphic line.

I still don’t really like the violet shape near the point, and I’m thinking of removing it, or covering it. I guess I should have been more faithful to the desert triad! I think the violet area would look much better with a bright turquoise. The painting below is how I’ve left it for now.

“Argument” ©Ruth Armitage, 2014, 21×14″ Mixed Media $750