Here are some photos from the afternoon. Ms. Hendry was kind enough to take some photos for me. All photos in this post are © 2011, Sharon Hendry, all rights reserved, used with permission.

The students listened very intently during the workshop. Photo, courtesy of Sharon Hendry.

This student concentrates on rendering a leaf accurately. Photo courtesy of Sharon Hendry

I answer questions while other students paint steadily. Photo courtesy of Sharon Hendry.

The students and I discuss how their work is progressing. Photo courtesy of Sharon Hendry

Clockwise from left: How-to instructions; Tips on tracing a leaf form: ArtL8dy's supply kit, with a paint dot card I made; demonstrating light source and shadow. Photos courtesy of Sharon Hendry

Thanks HCC illustration students for being so enthusiastic and receptive! Thanks Sharon, for the invitation to share with your students! To see more of Sharon’s artwork, visit her blog, E-14 Studio.

This week's focus was the forest floor at the base of the orchid.

The porcelain orchid grows in the mountainous terrain of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park. It’s a small plant, maybe 8 inches high, and the flowers veined with a startling deep blue-green.

This week, I painted the detritus and roots at the base of the plant. The last time I worked on this piece, I painted a lot of detailed little rootlets. Now I’ve decided it’s better to evoke a messy forest floor with loose washy shapes, rather than a squiggly, hard-edged tangle.

I'm painting the negative shapes to define the leaf litter on the forest floor.

What do you think?

This grid shows some of the gorgeous hues that resulted from mixing 50/50 portions of the red-violet spectrum of my own paintbox. I included the red-trending earth pigments of burnt sienna and sepia, as well as one of the warm reds, cadmium red deep, in the group of colors used.

Isn't it interesting to see the slight hue difference between Winsor Newton's alizarin crimson and the same pigment by Holbein?

What colors will contrast and coordinate best with these dark reds? Try using complementary colors from the opposite side of the color wheel, the green family:

Green mixes, top to bottom: Ultramarine and new gamboge(WN); indigo & cad. orange (WN); ultramarine & cad. lemon (WN); Sleeping Beauty turquoise (DS); and indigo & cad. lemon (WN)

Analogous colors from the orange and yellow side of the spectrum will harmonize with crimson and plum:

This chart looks very 1960s to me! I did use one complementary pairing—dioxazine purple is sandwiched at lower left between two slabs of new gamboge.

For further inspiration, here are some links to some classic artworks with palette mixes echoing this fall’s trend for deep reds:

• Mark Rothko painting using magenta with green and orange at MoMA
• Bonnard’s palette included a wide range of pinks, oranges and reds. He even used hot-toned crimson for shadows! Here are some videos from the Metropolitan Museum of Art about his late interiors.
• Paul Klee was a subtle and brilliant colorist. His Rose Garden from 1920 uses many tones of deep red and violet.
• Raphael’s portrait of Pope Julius II uses a sharp contrast of red with malachite green
• Maria Sybilla Merien, the intrepid explorer of Surinam’s tropical forests, combined purple with moss green in this etching of a butterfly’s metamorphosis. Note how the wing silhouette visually rhymes with the leaf shapes!

Happy painting!

The first wash layers are laid in on this watercolor of the flowering cactus.

How fortunate I took photos of the cactus flower while it was in bloom. I’ll be able to work on the body of the cactus from life, but placing the initial washes over the entire composition will make it easier to judge the contrast between the pale, pale pink of the blossom and the green ribs of the plant, with their blue undertones.

Top left: W-N Sepia graded wash. Top right: Holbein Gray Violet. Mixes on right, starting 2nd from top: 50/50 mix of sepia and gray-violet; mostly gray-violet; mostly sepia.

I mixed this soft shade of warm, brown-violet gray while working on the hamadryad butterfly painting. (“Gray” is the color theory term for a color mixed from secondary or tertiary colors.)
To mix this desaturated hue, use equal parts sepia and (Holbein) gray-violet.
Because gray-violet is listed as only “moderate” on the lightfastness scale, I recommend you use it for works made for reproduction or personal use. (thus the qualifying “perhaps” in the title! )

Far left: Graded wash of pure potter's pink. Top row, from left: Mix with Holbein Brilliant Jaune 1; New Gamboge; W-N Ultramarine; D-S Sleeping Beauty Turquoise. Bottom row, from left: Caran D'Ache Supracolor II, 3888-051; Holbein Organic Vermilion; W-N Indigo; D-S Lapis Lazuli.

When it comes to buying watercolors, I’m like a kid let loose in a candy store–I want one of everything.
I bought this potter’s pink from Daniel Smith a few years ago as part of a “buy x, get 1 free” sale. This is such a useful color! Potter’s pink is a subdued, yet very rosy pink which granulates in an even pattern and granulates any mix you blend it with. It sparkles subtly, due to the granulation, but not in a metallic way that would be unusable for reproduction. Pinkcolor, as it’s also known, is a pigment used historically for ceramic glaze colors and transferware in English potteries. It was also popular with English artists like Turner and Constable in their landscape and portrait watercolor sketches.
I find it a great choice for muted tones, such as roots, shoots, moths, wattles, claws, etc. This would be a very useful color in all kinds of flesh tone blends, from pale and rosy to tawny ambers or cocoas.
Potter’s pink is available from several different brands, so you should be able to find a tube from your favorite art supplier.

Notice how the petals are handled differently in each camellia blossom.

This illustration of camellia blossoms shows different ways of rendering the texture of the physically fragile, yet intensely colored petals.

Discovering how to create deeper and lighter shades of the same opera pink was really challenging. In the blossom at upper left, I charged right in with alizarin crimson and permanent maroon in the folds, causing visual “holes” that drew the eye in without revealing detail, or matching the color of the flower. I decided to leave well enough alone, and began work on the top, partially denuded flower at top center. Layering light washes of opera pink with soft non-linear scribbles of colored pencil improved the airiness of the blossom considerably.

Leaving well enough alone, I began on the third full blossom at bottom center. I pushed the layering a little further on this one and then stopped early enough so that directional highlights on the petals remained high value. The bud was a simple wet on wet wash with shadow details added at the end.

Finally, I returned to the first bloom. I wet and lifted some of the overdark shadows, then pushed further into layering color with both pencil and wash. This was a great lesson in just how much more color and working the paper surface and image can stand.

While I’m very pleased with each of the individual blooms, I can’t say that it works as an overall composition, due to the different textures and styles on each flower. And the single petals at the bottom are a real mistake!

I've reached the halfway milestone on this complex illustration!

Monday afternoon I stepped back from the painting table and realized I had completed half of this illustration of a hamadryad butterfly. Well, I’d better not fall over patting myself on the back!

Onward!

Step by step: painting a colorful Hamadryad butterfly. © 2011 Wren M. Allen

Last week I started work on a natural history illustration of a Hamadryad butterfly. I thought I’d join each day’s painting session in a progression, so you could see the slow layering and build-up of an image. The complex patterns of this Hamadryad help it blend in with the textured bark and lichens of the tree trunks where it leaves in the Foz do Iguaçu National Park in southern Brazil.

Red Gerberas