Thursday 3 January 2008

... and winter colours



The end of the previous post on lines and compositions was introducing some of the colours of those wintery fields, woods and grasses. In summer I had begun to notice more clearly different landscape palettes - notably Scottish summer colours and how they changed from the colours of the Negev desert in Spring.

So, now onto Northern German winters... noticing the changing colours and the factors that make up those colours such as low sun, bare trees and fields, cold temperatures and so on has been one of the exciting moments of beginning to paint: suddenly everything around me takes on all these variations and changes in colours: tone, hue, value and chroma and blue stops being just blue but becomes much more than that.

Enough talking... I only took a few oilies and my watersoluble neopastels with me - for both I just need very few sticks to be able to mix without water. I did a couple of test patches of where my colours would get me. Nothing fancy but useful nonetheless.


Neopastel ii colour swatches in Moleskine


Oil pastel colours swatches in Moleskine
(For blending I used the clear Sennelier medium stick
for the first time - like it...)

Since I had come back home, I had been meaning to do some more experimentation with those colours - but life somehow came in the way. So, while that is one of the next things to do (over the weekend, maybe?), here are some more photos which captured some of the views that really stood out for me:

The haziness above a bare field (at start of the post); but also the variations of some lush greens, ochres and yellows of different fields, meadows and the tracks beside them. Lastly: the silvery greens of conifers intermixed with just a hint of heather purple - and their variations.





I've uploaded some more photos to this Flickr set here
And: as a wave to other people's recent blog posts on colour - including some very good suggestions for sketching, see Lindsay's post here and Penelope's here.

Oh, and seeing that it's post no 1 in 2008: Have a very good new year!

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2 comments:

Lindsay said...

Lovely colors in your photos and you are tempting me to get a few more of those Neo 2 colors. They seem so easy for on the spot sketching.

Anonymous said...

great photos and a great website. I really like your style. I was out today taking winter photos too.
Brian Peterson