Yellow is a difficult family of colors to work with in the studio. No other color is so easy to contaminate as yellow. Just the tiniest grain of another pigment will turn a creamy butter yellow to a rotten egg green or muddy tan.

Rendering shadows and dimensionality is another challenge. Just what color should you use to paint the shadow of a yellow object? The unthinking choice of black will turn the shadows an olive lime green. Color theory states that the complement of a color should be used to mix the shadow tones, but mixing yellow with its opposite, violet, results in a muddy brown.

Your eye sees yellow fruits, but the eyedropper tool reveals many different hues.

This photo of some yellow fruits shows some of the range of hues in both the shadows and the specular highlights. I used the eyedropper in Photoshop to pick out the different tones. Notice how the green color of the unripe fruit is still apparent in the ripe specimens.

From greenish ochre to orange tan, an egg is more than just yellow.

Eggs, butter and cheese are more examples of objects that we think of as yellow, but which contain many other hues within the main color. As measured by Photoshop’s eyedrop tool, the objects below fit our preconceptions of the shades found in the yellow color family.

Do the colors of these dairy products really match our idea of what is yellow?

Some shades of brown are deep, desaturated shades of yellow. Other browns are actually in the red family.

Always observe the colors in your subject matter. The actual shade is not always what your intellect tells you it ought to be.

Next: A look at some yellow watercolor pigments and their value ranges.

Studio set up to photograph my botanical illustrations.

On Monday afternoon, the Wrenaissance Man was kind enough to share his photography skills and equipment to help me photograph my completed botanical illustrations.

Because of the tiny details in the artwork and the size of the images, I was reluctant to stitch multiple scans together. I also had concerns that the multiple-pass scan method would crease or dent the fine Italian cotton watercolor paper, rendering the originals useless for exhibit or sale.

By using a high-resolution camera and some simple fill flashes, the resulting photographs should be flexible enough to use for reproduction ranging from the Web to my business promotions to print-on-demand goods such as posters or limited-edition gicleés.

I look forward to posting an up-to-date portfolio page of my botanical work soon!

How the color's faded in this autumn gourd! © Wren M. Allen

It’s a good thing I photographed this gourd on its first day in the studio! As autumn gourds dry out, they often lose their brilliant color, even if they dry evenly and keep their form. The greens on this gourd have all faded to an ochre yellow.

Nothing says autumn like a colorful gourd!

I bought this beautiful little gourd at Whole Foods the day after I finished the bromeliad. What an expressive stem balanced by the round shape with knobby protrusions!

Doesn’t it look very Dutch still-life to you?

Waiting to bloom: Corpse Flower Lois © Wrenaissance Art

Like almost everybody else in Houston this July, I rushed to see Lois the Corpse Flower bloom at the Museum of Natural Science. Or rather, to watch her in bud, as she didn’t actually bloom until 3 weeks after the initial announcement. The crowds were not too bad if you went at 7 am, as I usually did. Besides the flower, it was an amusing exercise in non-profit public relations, marketing and expectations management. How does one balance the need to promote an interesting educational event to the public using the media, without pushing said newsmedia into a hype machine for a natural process that can’t possibly meet the breathless vaporings of the 6 o’clock broadcasters?

The atrium where the flower was displayed was very cramped, with no room to discreetly sketch, although I did manage to get a basic palette mixed for a final composition one weekday morning.

The plant itself is pretty interesting. Arum titan grows from a corm, just like anemones. Unlike anemones, it grows on limestone cliffs in the Indonesian rainforest. The bloom imitates the look and smell of carrion to attract the beetles that pollinate it. Immediately after pollination, the giant flower closes, and the plant enters dormancy, later re-sprouting in its vegetal stage.

For an illustrator, the flower offers many rendering challenges of texture, color and composition.

Check back often to see updates as I illustrate this fascinating flower!

Tonight we fly out of Rio to our next adventure—in Houston, Texas!

Corcovado shines in the returning sunlight

After the heavy rains earlier this week, the sunshine yesterday was a welcome relief. Corcovado sparkles with the Jardim d’Alah, the canal and park that separates Ipanema from Leblon, in the foreground.

An uprooted ficus tree on Visconde de Albuquerque, Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro was hit by three days of heavy rains and wind this week. Some 200 people lost their lives in the state, most in landslides. The landslides occurred in the mountainside favelas. Earth and rocks, already destabilized by illegal deforestation and unlicensed residential construction, were loosened by the vast amounts of rain and avalanched, burying residents in the debris. Another factor exacerbating street flooding was the high tide entering the canals and canalized rivers that drain the Lagoa and provide sea passage to both sewage and rain run-off and coinciding with the period of heaviest rain.

The tragedy highlights the need for both improvement to civic infrastructure and more importantly, for land reform laws that would make it possible for all of Rio’s residents to lease or purchase housing in the urbanized zones served by public utilities and construction safety codes.

Corcovado on the cluttered skyline of midtown Leblon, Rio de Janeiro

This is our view of Corcovado from our hotel apartment’s varanda (balcony) here in Leblon, shot on 5 April when we moved in for our last few days in Rio de Janeiro. This is a much more normal version of “a window that looks out on Corcovado.”

Ipanema beach near Posto 9, 2 pm on 4 April 2010

Saturday afternoon before Easter, and the beach is hopping near Posto 9, Ipanema. It was sunny, but a bit cooler than it had been earlier in the week. Ipanema was full of tourists, Brazilian and foreign. It was a good thing everyone got their fill of sun, because:

Easter Sunday morning, Ipanema beach at Arpoador, looking west

Easter Sunday dawned with overcast skies. The early strollers and sunworshippers got out as usual, but the tourists were no doubt disappointed.