The Laws of Nature

Sunday, May 17, 2009

The limited palette

Several years ago I took a Janet Fish workshop hoping to learn more about color. I think her paintings demonstrate a masterful understanding of color relationships and proportions. The best advice I got from her was to use a limited palette in order to unify my work, and to study the paintings of Wolf Kahn, among others who are masters of color. So, I created a template of palettes used in many of Kahn's paintings and then analyzed the proportions and placements of those colors. I soon learned to limit my own palette to only three or five colors, and to create other colors from those. This effectively unified my work. Every now and then I experiment with new combinations for my egg shell series by doing a few "studies" at a small size (8" x 10") that I can complete in one day. Here are a few examples of my efforts:

3 comments:

-Don said...

Thanks for sharing. I've been doing something similar with my work. I only use 3 or 4 colors (plus white) in each of my paintings. I don't think I've used more than 5 in over two years. -Don

David Lobenberg said...

Fun. Fun, Fun!

Myrna Wacknov said...

Thanks for showing the beauty of your limited palette eggshell paintings. I, too, try to analyze Wolf Kahn's colors and then translate them into a portrait.