Watercolour: Choosing colours and Mixing Greys

FYI: *Squirrel translation: my ADHD brain went on a side quest and needs to insert information… sometimes it’s related, sometimes it’s not lol

Starting a new painting 

Goals:

* As much as possible, use paint colours I don’t use often to get experience with mixing.
* Create a painting that reminds me of my great grandmother, Mumma.
* Try a new paint surface.
* Try at least 1 brush I haven’t used before.

The journey begins:

11-11-24

Dear Diary,

This weekend I started working on an African Violet still life that I’d set up and photographed a while ago. My great grandmother was an avid grower of these lovely plants, I remember her sun room, a long hall way with one full wall of windows. It had tables down the length of the room that were covered in African violets. I have no idea if my memory is accurate, but that’s the memory I have.

On the day I took this picture I remember the sun streaming in and creating this gorgeous shadow on the wall. Interestingly my African Violet had just flowered for the first time in about 2 years. 

*Squirrel!: It’s now completely covered in flowers, so it must love this spot in my window.

Anyway, I quickly set up a little still life. I love the self watering pot and that it has a matt surface. I added my 2 little birds as I loved the gloss surface and thought the different finishes would make an interesting painting challenge. So here is my reference…

I used an app called Coolors to pick out the colours I’d need from my reference. 

Lots of greens, both grey greens and a more yellow/green. 

Purple for the flower, a touch of yellow and many tones of grey. 

Because it would be the most used, I wanted to choose my green for the leaves first. I wanted a grey/green and didn’t want to mix it (I have so many paints I’ve never used and wanted to try some of them out). So I looked at my palette colour chart and decided to try out a few. 

I am a massive over-thinker, so I made a deal with myself that as soon as I found a colour that was close to what I wanted  I would not look any further  

I played around with Olive Green and then Oxide of Chromium but I really wanted a single pigment, transparent colour. So both of them were out. Then I tried and Perylene Green and bingo! It’s transparent, single pigment, staining and non granulating. No over thinking, I had my green.

I also needed a purple (for my flower) and a yellow. 

On the page above, I tried all the colours in both strong and light tones, then tried dropping in some other possible colours wet on wet to see what they’d do.

When I came to the purple, I started by picking Winsor violet, it is closest to my reference so that was easy. The yellow was a bit harder but I was wanting a limited palette so I tried mixing Aureolin (Daniel Smith) with my green and it looked fantastic. It felt like I could use that mix for the lighter coloured leaves and the Aureolin would also work for the centre of the flower. Again the purple and yellow were both single pigment and transparent.

Finally I needed a grey for the background and cast shadows.

*Squirrel!: unless otherwise mentioned, all paints are Windsor and Newton brand

I’m in the Louise DeMasi (queen of watercolour tutorials) Patreon group, a while ago we had a discussion about trying to find a grey alternative to our favourite grey mix. My go to mix is French ultramarine and Burnt Sienna but we wanted a mix that was non granulating. I love the way it granulates and separates, but sometimes (like this case) I want a smooth finish. 

Originally I had planned on using these two colours, because they’re my go to mix and I know exactly how to mix and paint with them. They’re like a comfort blanket…

 

Burnt Sienna and French Ultra = a stunning grey mix

I had wanted a non granulating mix but we never did come up with anything that worked as consistently as this mix so it was put out of mind. 

I went to my sketchbook and started laying down my colours on the left hand side to create my plan for the painting. As you can see in this pic, I laid down those 5 colours. I then thought I’d mix the paints together and see what happened. Of course the blue and brown made a lovely grey mix (but it granulates and separates), the green and yellow made a lovely light yellow green and the purple and yellow made a nice greyed down purple that I didn’t love for this project, so I’m making a mental note here to make sure my flower gets done in 2 parts with plenty of dry time in between.

The only colours I didn’t try mixing at this stage was the green and purple, so I thought, why not?

So I mixed them up and what do you know, a stunning grey! A really really stunning neutral grey and it’s non-granulating!

I’m starting to get really excited about this now, that grey could be my new favourite mix!

I mean it makes sense, it has all the primary colours in the mix, green is just blue and yellow & Violet is blue and red but the paints I chose are both single pigments, so it makes a stunning grey that’s clean and not muddy.

So I have my limited palette! Just 3 colours - Perylene Green, Windsor Violet and Aureolin ❤️

Let the fun begin!

Paula x