Palette Inspiration: Fall Leaves

Some days it’s hard to be inspired..but then there is the entire season of Fall!! My inspiration for color for the palette today comes from some amazing Fall leaves:

You would think that after two weeks in France, that I could paint only things French..and believe me I am painting plenty, but when walking my dogs today I was simply blown away by the amazing color, right here in North Carolina.  Colors I could only dream of mixing on my palette.  Right?

Well, never one to shy away from a challenge..I decided to give it my best shot.  I have done this in years past (see last years post below), without the type of success I expected. I decided I had to try again.  Well, it was fun, and I admit I did pick some “easier” colors, but there is nothing like the real thing!

Now on to the good stuff: PAINTING!

Wait and see where the inspiration led me to…

 

Beth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fall colors inspire art, but test the limits of paint, pigment and imagination:

Hello Fall! Inspiration for color is everywhere! We had a few overcast weeks here-but after the hurricane the sun is out and the color is glorious!

Loving the changes!

Inspiration

It is easy to understand how fall colors can inspire anyone to want to paint. However, sometimes painting those colors can prove to be tricky if you think too hard..

Sometimes instead of just “feeling” a painting-I start to think. I started out with “feeling” I began doing some paintings with fall color as I “saw” it. Well, that led to some of my birch tree paintings with lots of fuchsia and purple and orange.

Birch Reflections, 12 x 16, 240.00

Then I started picking up leaves as I was walking one day. I decided I wanted to paint those colors…no matter how I mixed my paints-I couldn’t get what I wanted.

At this point I decided to take the various color combinations I had been mixing and dabbling with and put them onto some leaves just to see how close I was getting:

Inspiration getting technical

 

Well these are just two examples-but they show that it isn’t as easy as you would think to “make” the colors of nature. Well, not exactly. It then became more of a scientific experiement for me. All artistic thinking was put aside and I was briefly inspired to master this challenge. After a bit (and some success) I was reminded of

paint colors testing on an all natural paint chip

something artist John Poon said to me once. We were painting plein air on the N.C. coast and I was struggling to get “just the right color”-aka exactly what I saw in front of me. John reminded me that pigment has limitations. We could not make that exact color-but that was ok. Over the months since that conversation I have come to a couple of conclusions about this topic. A) I need to remember to stay with my “feelings”-in this case I interpreted fall colors as fuschia’s, purple and oranges. It’s a good thing because that is me and the way I paint. I am not a super realist or overly naturalistic landscape painter-so I don’t have to match anything! B) As humans we cannot copy or make exactly all the colors out there that God gave us. I see that as awesome, and a great reminder of  how amazing and powerful He is! So, now that I have had my fun and color mixing time, it is back to painting “my way” just as I was created to do!