06
Nature is definitely a worthwhile stop on the road to color proficiency and inspiration.
By the way, Aristotle theorized that different colors were derived from combinations of sunlight, firelight, air, and water. I found that interesting.
Last week, our teacher came in with a bag full of leaves that we could pick from. We made grids of 1/2″ squares that we were supposed to fill with the colors we were observing in the leaf. No adjacent squares could contain exactly the same hue.
Once we got past wanting to somehow depict the shape of the leaf, it was pretty easy! A nice excursion into the land of abstraction, too.
Hey, it’s our plant that we found in the vineyards! Did the teacher tell you what kind it was?
I know!! Yes, she did, actually – it’s called pokeweed, and people originally used the juice of the berries to make purple ink/paint/whatever. I think that’s cool.