This page in the purple section of my Rainbow Art Journal was simply inspired by a desire to use complementary colours. I pivoted to what is apparently my default setting of drawing a female figure in front of a disc. My husband asked why the people I draw always look miserable. My guess is it may be because neutral expressions are easier for me to draw. So I am making a note to self to try and draw a wider range of expressions.
Since I was in the yellow section of my Rainbow Art Journal, I wanted to include a page that was about complementary colours. In this case, that meant yellow and purple. I have also been using this art journal to record the art materials I use so this page was created using three Daler Rowney Aquafine watercolours: cadmium yellow, gamboge, and purple lake. I got the illustration to the point that the figure was complete and the background was entirely yellow. Thinking that the yellow background was too bland and that the figure was floating in too much empty space, I added the purple plant forms. I think perhaps I went a bit overboard and now the background is too busy – and the purple a bit too dominant in a page that is supposed to be predominantly yellow. Nevermind that I strayed from my intentions because I quite like the illustration regardless.
This is the last illustration in the orange section of my Rainbow Art Journal. Phew. Orange is not my favourite colour so it has been a bit of a slog to get through this section, which also coincided with a lean period when it came to free time. Looking back through my blog posts, I learned that it was almost exactly a year ago that I created the first illustration in the orange section. Yikes. That isn’t very speedy progress, is it? Let’s hope it doesn’t take me a year to complete the next section which is, of course, yellow.
On the subject of transitions, this illustration was inspired by the transition between seasons. As frequent readers will know, I am very much not fond of Winter. This Winter has not been too abysmal in that we have not had any big monster storms. We had a surprise snow storm in November that caused a lot of chaos but we really got off lightly in terms of quantity of snow. What we have experienced instead is a number of smaller winter weather events that caused disruption – days when my kids had snow days or late arrivals when I had to still go to work, for instance. The landscape looks beautiful when blanketed in sparkling white, but shoveling it is not so appealing. Shoveling it while your husband is working in Hawaii is even less appealing. Anyway, there are finally definite signs of Spring around and the temperatures are steadily increasing. This means we can venture out wearing slightly fewer layers and can feel comfortable in less bulky coats or in cosy sweaters.
I wanted the composition to be quite narrow in order to accentuate the idea of cosiness. Since this is a page in a journal with an illustration already on its reverse, I could not crop the paper down. I, therefore, used strips of washi tape to “frame” my drawing. The tape then inspired my colour palette.
It seems like eons since I last cracked open my Rainbow themed Art Journal and created anything in its pages. It’s definitely been a good few months. Thanks to a Snow Day, however, I found myself with an extra ration of free time so I decided to produce another piece in the orange section of my art journal – which is only the third section – I am really not making great progress with this project. As we all know, orange and blue are complementary colours so I decided to play around with that palette for this page. The subject is another one of my reworkings of one of my older illustrations in a different medium. I much prefer the proportions of the face in the ink and watercolour original but I like the strength of the colours in this piece. I do enjoy the asymmetrical composition too. I will be glad to see the back of the orange pages of this art journal, however. That should motivate me to keep working in it.
A Pict in PA 