Colorful Cabbage

Colorful Cabbage

Image Size 14" x 21"

Watercolor

This started out as a poured painting.  I poured about 3 layers and then removed the resist and finished it by painting directly because I wanted soft edges within the leaves.  I again used the QoR watercolors because I wanted to see if I needed less paint when mixing my colors for the pours.  I needed A LOT less paint than with the watercolors I've used in the past.  I started with small dabs of fresh paint in my water mixtures and had to add extra water to each color to tone down the intensity.  I was really surprised at how much less paint was necessary.  Usually, I have to keep adding more and more paint to each container to get the level of color I need so I am really happy to have found a paint that is so intense.

By pouring the paint, I got the color blending of the purples in the middle of the cabbage with the greens of the outside leaves.  I think pouring gives the colors in a painting a cohesiveness that you might not otherwise achieve.  It also gives the colors a beautiful glow.

I used a limited palette for the cabbage.  Usually, when I use three primaries there is only one secondary color that is pure and the others are a bit muddy.  I used Alizarin Crimson, Indanthrone blue and Quinacridone yellow.  With these three colors, I was able to mix a beautiful purple and a lot of clear shades of green and although I didn't use orange in this painting, the Alizarin and yellow make a pretty good orange.   I think I've found my favorite triad!

I know that it's supposed to be possible to mix every color from the three primaries but I wanted a warm brown for the background and I didn't feel that I was getting the color I wanted from these three colors so I used a mix of burnt umber and burnt sienna for the background and then brought those colors into the shadows of the cabbage to warm them up a bit.

Farmer's Market Find

Farmer's Market Find

Image Size 6" x 6"

Oil

I found this little cabbage at the farmer's market on Saturday.  It's only about 4" around and if a vegetable can be cute, that is how I would describe this one!  I didn't have time to paint it until today so some of it's fresh glow was gone but it was still a fun subject.  Since it was cloudy today, I couldn't take pictures of it in the sun.  Instead, I set it up in the studio with a light.  My usual light set-up fell and broke this morning so I had to get a new one.  I got an LED light bulb thinking that it would give a realistic daylight color but it seemed much cooler to me.   I think I will change that for the next set-up although the LED lights don't give off as much heat, which was nice.

This is a palette knife painting.  I haven't done a palette knife painting since January and I really missed using that technique so I decided it was time to dig out the oil paints.   Vegetables seem to look really good using the palette knife and I'll probably be doing some more in the near future.