Monday 9 January 2012

Colour from the Season - Lichen greens

Mixing up paints to add colour detail to this drawing, it occurred to me how easy I find it. It goes back to my degree at Camberwell when I didn't have a lot of money to buy paint so I mainly bought the three primary's. I usually got ultra marine, crimson red and lemon yellow, as well as (and essentially) black and white. If I could I would also get yellow ochre, burnt sienna and raw umber, but I could make do without these as you can mix every colour from the primary's plus black and white - it was just quicker to be able to add ochres and umbers to get olive greens etc.

Since I began this notebook, I've lost track of the number of plant colours that I've matched to printed CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black)). I've now got detailed information with which to mix up hundreds of plant colours. For example Lichen green2 (below) has 10% Cyan, 0% Magenta, 55% Yellow and 30% Black. This knowledge makes mixing colours easier still and what's really great is they will print accurately as well.

I've sampled some of the colour I found in Oakmoss Lichen before but this is the first time I've tackled drawing it. It was as hard as it looks and I had to use a magnifying glass to look for the detail. Reminded me of a deer's antlers - the shadow of the drawing is especially striking.

outlined in pencil.

















inked in drawing - a few blots but nothing too serious.























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...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.