Before painting my next portrait from sketches, I wanted to see test colour palettes.
The last painting I did, I struggled most with what colours to use, and as a result I applied a lot of thick paint to the canvas before having to remove it. It meant the painting was overworked and could have had a better finish if this had not been the case.
I want to investigate how planning my colours could impact the paining process. Will it mean I am less instinctual when painting therefore the result is not as good? Or will more planning make for better paintings?
I knew already that I wanted there to be a cool, bluish light hitting the body and making the highlights (based on the TV in the room I am basing the painting on).
So if the highlights are the coolest colours it could be interesting to see what the result of the shadows being the warmest colours is:
Note: I made the colours have an 80% opacity so I could see the image of the underpainting vaguely underneath.
I included the rug at the person’s feet, which in real life was a different colour to the duvet. I thought the purple was too cool, and maybe overcomplicated the piece so I got rid of it:
With the throw removed, the piece is too simple. I like how the throw breaks up the linear shape of the body.
So I added the throw back in but added some warmer tones so it worked better with the colours in the rest of the palette.
This seems like a good colour palette! I am liking the vibrancy of the colours used. I enjoy working with such colour, but at the moment that is the extent of the reasoning behind them.
Soon I can explore my colour palette more, with the next artist I look at perhaps (Andrey Remnjov?).
Georgina Harris 