Painting and Color Work

Limited Color Palette for Wood Crafts

A limited color palette allows you total control over which elements in your painting become dominant; which become secondary; and which fall into the foreground, mid-ground, or background.  So whether you do fine art paintings, wood carvings, or pyrography, understanding how  limited palette can work for your craft makes the painting steps so much easier.

You probably are already using a limited color palette but may not realize that the way you chose your colors has a name and purpose. So let’s do a little art color theory exploration.

What captures your attention first?
   1. The barn scene.
   2. The path and background mountains.
   3. The Christmas tree and fence lights.

It is the Christmas tree and fence lights that catch my eye. The barn scene becomes a secondary element which simply tells the story of where that Christmas tree is located.  The reason the tree is dominate is because I have used a limited color palette.

 

PLANNING YOUR PALETTE
Limiting your color palette does not necessary mean using just a minimal number of colors, although that is one method of creating a limited palette painting.

This painting used fifteen different colors but specifically limits where each color can be used.
For this sample it means that I have carefully planned in advance where I would use my colors and what type of color – neutral, pure, or tonal value – I would use for each element.

I began by categorizing each element in the painting as a neutral area, natural area, man made area, tree lights area, and the main feature of the design. This gives me five types of elements in the pattern.

ASSIGNING TONAL VALUE PALETTES
Neutrals are my blending and shading tones for my natural and man made elements. These are simple white, black, and mid-tone brown.

Naturals are my snow, sky, mountains, and trees. For this palette I chose mid-tone gray-scaled colors of medium blue-gray, medium purple-gray, and medium green-gray. All three have the same muted mid-range gray tone which unities them on the tonal value scale.

Man made elements include the barns, the silos, and the fence posts. To make these areas slightly different from the natural tones I have added a medium red-gray to my colors. This color is only used in those man made objects.

Tree light elements use a total new palette of only primary and secondary pure colors that contain no white, gray, or black toning.

Highlights of pink and pale bright green are used only in the primary element of the main Christmas tree to make it the dominant feature of the entire design.

 

GRAY SCALE V. PURE COLOR
Gray-scaled tonal value colors are used throughout this scene, with the exception of the tree light color palette.
The greatest contrast of those tones are found in the barn roof overhangs where the pure white of the snow meets the darkest black tone of the barn wall shadows. The strength of this black-white contrast is most often found in the front elements of your mid-ground area.

As you come forward in a scene, into the foreground, more colors can be distinguished and therefore there are less black-toned elements. A foreground tree trunk has shades of brown and gray where a mid-ground tree trunk tends to lose that coloring therefore going into the black-tones.

Background scene elements tend to be in the white-toned area of your colors. Distant trees, mountains, and the sky area of worked in the pale white-gray tones.

 

PURE COLOR TONAL VALUES
Pure colors as primary and secondary hues have no added white, gray, or black tone and therefore no real tonal value.

Those bright pure colors become mid-toned with only as much visual impact to the design as the background mountains.
In the gray scaled painting what has become dominant are the areas of greatest tonal value contrast – those areas where the blackest tones lies directly against the brightest white tone.

Home Sweet Home- Jewel-Toned Dark Value Palette
This Home Sweet Home hen uses a limited palette of only dark-toned valued colors – dark red-brown, dark green-blue, dark yellow, and dark brown. The dark toned colors are often called jewel tones.
As a folk art design the elements in the pattern are simple and a very limited color palette emphasizes that simplicity.
Pattern available in Hens, Roosters, and Chickens

 

 

Snow Day
My final example of limited palette coloring for your wood crafts uses only primary
and secondary colors. No tertiary hues are used.  Since this is a wood burning this small wall heart
was painted using watercolors which allow all of the sepia burning to show underneath the hue.
The full tutorial and pattern are found here …

 

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR OUR PAINTING?
It means that color dominates tonal value, that dramatic changes in tonal value dominate over mid-toned values, and that by choosing to limit our color palette we, the artist, decide which elements we want to have the strongest impact in the final design.

I can push an area forward by using pure color hues or I can set the element firmly in the mid-ground range by using dramatic tonal contrasts, or I can push the area into the far background by using closely related mid-toned values.

Ceremonial Mask – Transparent Wash-Tone Palette
Only very water-thinned, pure color make the limited palette for this Ceremonial Mask relief carving.
By only using transparent coloring and coloring without a gray-tone addition,
the wood grain and antiquing remain dominant.
Pattern available in Ceremonial Masks

 

HOW DO I GIVE EXTRA IMPACT?
Our original limited palette contains only two pastel tones – pink which is red plus white, and pale Caribbean green which is green plus white. Neither of these colors contain gray or black.

Those two pastels, used only in the main Christmas tree are enough color change to separate this tree from the other lit pine tree and the fence line lights.

Click on the image below for a free, full-sized, printable pattern.

 

 

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Painting with Eye Shadow Wood Carving, Pyrography

This wonderful idea is not mine … it comes from TurtleSoupBeads YouTube Channel for polymer clay bead creations.  In fact from her video:

Creating Mini Doughnut Beads with Polymer Clay

What I have done is applied her great technique to our wood carving, wood burning, and gourd art paintings.  Its so simple, but extremely effective.  The smaller background fish has just the acrylic paints and the overlay larger fish has been enhanced with eye shadow make up.

After you have finished painting your wood project using acrylics or oil paints but before you have applied any finish or sealer, grab up some of your old eye  shadow make up. You will also want several small clean, filbert-type brushes.

Pick up a little eye shadow color on your brush and gently rub the brush over the area that you want to shade or intensify the color.  You can apply several coats and you can apply one color over another to create added  color interest.

For my fish decoy I started with a dark purple eye shadow in the deep joint line between the fish’s body and his top fin.  Dark blue eye shadow added depth to the v-gouge line that runs through the center of his body, and bright green was added under his eye to enhance that sparkle.

Deep purple and teal were worked along the joints of the fins with the body and along the bottom edge of his belly.

Because eye shadow is a powder it is easily blended with just a brush, adding gentle graduations of color.  While I probably won’t paint an entire wood project just with eye shadows, they are perfect for brightening and strengthening your shadows and highlights without any brush strokes.

After you are done simple proceed onto your sealer and finishing steps!!!!

Thank you TurtleSoupBeads !!!!

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Adult Coloring - Colored Pencil Application

Adult Coloring – Working with Colored Pencils

Adult Coloring, Colored PencilsTake a few moments today and browse through our Adult Coloring, and Pyrography Colored Pencil articles.

Adult Coloring – Working with Colored Pencils     New!!!

Adult Coloring – Colored Pencil Application     New with Free Pattern !!!

Working in Layers, Colored Pencils

Coloring your Wood Burnings with Colored Pencils

Wood Spirit Gourd Pencil Jar, Mixed Media

Cross-Crafting Seminar, Colored Pencils and Pyrography

 

adult coloring portraitsNew Patterns and E-Project
Available at ArtDesignsStudio.com

Adult Coloring, Pyrography, Carving Portraits
Exclusive Downloaded Digital Patterns by Lora S. Irish
62 Patterns in 100 DPI, JPG format

Adult Coloring Portraits E-Project
Exclusive Downloaded E-Book by Lora S. Irish
146 Page, 62 Patterns E-Project (.pdf Format)

Adult Coloring – Working with Colored Pencils Read More »

adult coloring portraits

Adult Coloring Portraits

Break the Boundaries !!!

There is no question that adult coloring is such a success … it’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s easy.

But aren’t you ready for something more?  Aren’t you losing interest in filling in little tiny areas of nonsense doodle designs? Have you had enough of coloring in one repeated pattern a hundred times across a sheet of paper?

You know you can do so much more than just fill-in-the-blank!

Let’s break out of the boundaries, let’s color outside the box, and let’s take on a new challenge … Adult Coloring Portraits.

adult coloring portraits

Our new 149 page PDF E-Book, by Lora S Irish, Adult Coloring Portraits is now ready for download to your computer.  It includes 6 step-by-step projects for creating brilliant, vibrant skin tones; 62 patterns for wood spirits, greenmen, pixies, elves, vampires, feathered shamans, dragons, and a small assortment of fun designs.

Let’s look at a sample portrait from our new E-Book.

We think of skin tones as shades of white, black, brown, red, and yellow … but all skin coloring is simply a shade of orange.  From very pale orange to deep, rich red-black, every human skin color can be created using the same set of colored pencils – a pale yellow-orange, medium golden orange, medium cadmium orange, red-orange, deep rust-orange, and burnt umber orange.

 And we often think of skin shadow colors as shades of deep brown or black.   Yet in colored pencils  using a plain medium or dark brown dulls and dirties the face color.

So let’s start by exploring what other colored pencil shades you may have in your kit that will create those vibrant shadows in your portrait work.

Here are five pages, directly from the E-Book, that show a few of the different shading colors you can used for your face – burnt umber, 70% gray, black cherry red, deep violet, and indigo blue – and how these colors interact with your overall skin color.

Click on the images, below, for a full-sized, 8 1/2″ x 11″, printable copy directly from our new E-Book, Adult Coloring Portraits.

Adult Coloring Portrait Pages

Adult Coloring Portrait Pages

Adult Coloring Portrait Pages

Adult Coloring Portrait Pages

Adult Coloring Portrait Pages

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color wheel

Colored Pencil Let’s Talk Color

Whether you are a wood carver, a pyrographer, or a gourd artist eventually you will be using color.  Color is part of everything we see and understanding how color works – the basics to color theory – insures that your project is vibrant, vivid, and bold each and every time.

skin colors

Over the next few days we will focus on how the eye sees color v. how the eye sees shadows and light, primary colors v. complimentary colors, and color combinations that create intense skin tones.

So, grab your freebie now and have fun reading through the basics.  Tomorrow we will start a fun, step-by-step Mystic Shaman portrait!

Color Theory by Irish

Colored Pencil Let’s Talk Color Read More »

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