Happy Groundhog day. For those of you that don't know what the meaning of this day is. It is the mid point of winter. YEAH!!!! And to celebrate we bring the groundhog (an oversized gopher) out of his den (cage) to see if he sees his shadow. If he does it means 6 more weeks of winter and if he doesn't than spring is supose to come early. For this part of the country it is gaurenteed we will have 6 more weeks of winter and it has been a very long winter so far. lol Finally we are getting some beautiful weather but as the snow disappears the brown lawn emerges. I am in desperate need of COLOR. :D So I drew out a couple of Macaw parrot profiles and am working them up 2 different ways. This is the first one and he was done with a combination of tangle patterns and brightly colored watercolors. So much fun. Hope you enjoy.
I chose to use a grisaille technique for the painting of this old man in watercolor. Grisaille is an old technique oil painters used to develop a monochromatic value study, kinda like a road map for your painting. This later served as a base for the addition of transparent layers of color. For this painting, I chose to use a limited palette of dioxazine purple, Naples yellow, alizarin crimson for the face with a pop or 2 of transparent orange and green gold at the end. **This is not a palette I would choose again and here's why. Naples yellow doesn't pack any punch and is opaque. This is not a great mix when you need to cover or mute the purple. Diox purple is also strong stainer, making it difficult to remove pigment. Sometimes this is ok, but didn't really help on this piece. I started this gentleman with an ink sketch that can be found in my Strathmore watercolor 400 series journal. I love the quality of paper in this journal but I wish it wou...

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