After a week suffering through the world's worst cold, I barely managed to sketch out my next painting. But when I went to start adding color, I found my mixing area full of old paint. Time for some palette cleaning! Hence, this sketchbook piece of some dead flies. As you can see, they aren't symmetrical or perfectly formed because the little nuisances have been squished. Still, they do have a lovely sheen and exquisite wings, don't they?
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| approx. 8" x 5.5" |
Oh Elaine, that dead fly is beautiful! I love the smudgy blue and the almost iridescent green. What are the colors ?
ReplyDeleteWell, that's complicated. I had dabs of ultramarine blue, mixed with permanent rose and light red. Also I had a green puddle that had cobalt blue, mixed with quin gold and burnt sienna and little dried out dabs of cerulean blue and pthalo green. I originally planned to just mush them together for a dark (like the fly body), but then I got interested and started picking from different parts of the puddle. The light red hates ultramarine and cerulean, so I got some separation there--light red and ultramarine is the deep blue, with a bit of the other colors contaminating the mix. The green was the cobalt/gold/sienna mix with some ultramarine/pthalo green glazes around the edges. So basically, it's just leftover colors that should create mud, but gave some interesting results.
DeleteLooks like you learned a lot from that honesty plant. I might have to change my procedure of cleaning my palate between paintings. I usually keep the special greens I’ve developed over time because I don’t like most of the greens from the tube. So I really like the greens and blues in the fly.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to Elaine to even paint dead flies as a thing of beauty. And they truly are.
ReplyDeleteThe fly is great. As I say till my face turns blue, it's all about the paint.
ReplyDeleteYour fly presents watercolor in all its glory!
ReplyDelete