Color Relationships

Predominantly Yellow               Predominantly Purple

After  my inspiring trip to the Edgar Payne exhibit in Tulsa, I returned to the studio and cracked open my Payne book on composition.  The book shows some sample exercises on color relationships, particularly on the use of complementary colors.  The first one I've done is Yellow/Purple.  Both of these small studies use the same colors, but in different proportions.  As you can hopefully see above, the study on the left uses more yellow than purple and the study on the right is the reverse, more purple than yellow.  All of the colors contain yellow and purple, with the addition of some orange, white and green.  I then took the same colors and did a floral using more purple than yellow.  My next post will show the result.

A Reason to Smile

 "A Reason to Smile," 8 x 6 in.          Oil on canvas panel.

To bid, visit this address:

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/buy/auction/127191

My favorite flowers are the simple ones, daisies, daffodils and tulips.  Year after year they return to brighten the world.  My father had a stroke last week and  I've been at a hospital with my mother for several days.  We're far from home in an unfamiliar city and even though my father will recover with lots of hard work, seeing this daffodil reminded me that there are still plenty of reasons to smile.  I hope this brings a smile to you as well.

Happy Spring,   Julie
(For those of you in the Rockies, spring really will arrive, and if not spring, it will be summer!)

Afternoon Blossoms

Afternoon Blossoms, 6 x 6 oil                   $125 framed

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Continuing to think about simplifying my subject, I painted this with my usual palette:  titanium white, cad lemon yellow, cad yellow pale, cad orange, cad red medium, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and pthalo blue.

Morning Bouquet

Morning Bouquet, 6x6" oil                                          $125 framed

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My upcoming posts, starting with this one, will all touch on the experimentation I did during my winter hibernation. 

 I greatly admire the small paintings of Lisa Daria Kennedy and so I spent some time exploring how she works.  She has very strong value patterns, highly simplified forms and mixes soft luminous grays.  I've successfully mixed a lot of her colors, but when I sit down to paint in her style, my own habits and inclinations become part of the mix as well (that's a good thing).  I set this little bouquet in my studio one morning and tried to keep her simplification and grays in mind as I painted it.  It definitely produced a much softer feeling.

Starting bid is $40 for the unframed painting.

It's Spring and the Return of ArtWalk!

Chickadee, 8 x 10," oil                                               $390

I seemed to have gone into hibernation this winter. I've spent lots of time studying and experimenting, but with the advent of Spring, I'm excited to take on some new subjects, colors and styles. One of my study activities was taking a 3 day workshop with Lani Vlaanderen on birds. I've enjoyed painting birds before, but really benefited from Lani's instruction on bird anatomy and colors. I highly recommend taking any course from Lani as she's a terrific artist, teacher and person. I painted "Chickadee" above in her class, and am still working on on a barn owl that I began there.

You can see "Chickadee" (above) at Colorado Expressions here in Colorado Springs. They began representing my work in January, and with their downtown location and stable of excellent artists, I'm very excited to work with them. Stop in to see the big, beautiful gallery. If you can't make it during the week, you can also see them during the Downtown's 1st Friday Art Walks. If you happen to be flying out of Colorado Springs in the near future, you can also see my work in the exhibit that Colorado Expressions has installed there.

And speaking of Art Walk, this Friday, April 5th, Old Colorado City's 2013 season begins. I'll be in my studio from 5 to 8 pm and am looking forward to seeing you after all these months!