Mood and meaning change with color

Color changes cause the mood to change and the shapes to take on different meanings.

Same shapes, different colors

24 x 24, pastel on sanded paper

These colors feel normal to me. Vibrant blues and violets and yellows. It's as if these colors are my best friends, or maybe they are my comfort colors (like comfort food with fewer calories!).

Reminds me of Van Gogh's "Portrait of a Peasant" painting I saw at the Norton Simon Museum recently.

How do you select your palette for a painting? By mood? By habit? By trial and error?

High key discovery

24 x 24, watercolor and pastel on Wallis Museum

Before I painted today, I gave myself an assignment: choose one or two paintings with similar palettes that are unlike what you normally paint. Discover the colors first with watercolor mixes, then by utilizing a limited pastel selection.

In Sarah Cash's book Sargent and the Sea, I looked at a James McNeil Whistler painting called "Crepuscule in Opal."

In David A. Cleveland's book A History of American Tonalism: 1880-1920, I studied William Morris Hunt's painting "Gloucester Harbor."

Both paintings are high key and have a beautifully soft range of color. Pale pinks and yellows, neutral grayed violets and cerulean blue. 

Using these colors as a guide, I painted this familiar beach path scene which I have painted several times before. Click here and here to see some recent efforts.

Results: I felt stretched by the high key palette and enjoyed discovering how these light values worked together to still describe a subject that is packed with personal meaning.

Seeking

24 x 24

pastel on prepared panel

Seeking. An active pursuit of something that is desired or prized. Those who seek often find. I'll let you you know on that.

Anticipation

Anticipation

15 x 15

pastel on BFK

With the sound of the surf beckoning me, I stand at the top of the path and pause for just a moment. Wet salty air blows through my clothes and hair and I feel the reassurance that I am back.

The beach always does that to me.

About 30 more steps and I will be at the top of the dune, overlooking the grandeur of the Pacific Ocean. I will walk on the sand and feel my perspective shift in the solemn face of tide and vastness of water. I will write my troubles on the sand and watch as they are erased by rushing waves.

But for this moment, it is all about anticipation.