Friday, January 18, 2013

Botanical studies



During the past holiday weeks I decided to start working on some botanical sketches of leaves, just to start looking into the never-ending shades of greens and how to achieve them. I'm finding it very daunting yet fascinating. During the last year or so I started studying colours very thoroughly and in doing so I took out all the colours of my palette that didn't have the features I needed to achieve my goals. I ended up using a rather limited choice of favourite pigments which has been able to provide me with any colour I needed so far. I like keeping it simple to get the best and most varied mixes out of them. It worked, until I started mixing to match those greens... Any thought from the botanical artists reading this will be much appreciated.
http://matteogrilli.blogspot.com.au/

8 comments:

  1. I really need to improve my painting techniques. I've been working through the local evergreens, but I just can't get the texture right (as well as the colour). Beautiful sketches!

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  2. Beautiful Matteo, your leaves are so realistic!!!

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  3. I can't see the originals but it seems you're on the right path, they're very delicate and realistic.

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  4. These are beautiful. Frame and sell!

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  5. Delicate. Ephemeral. Lovely. I love seeing the strokes of color that went into the leaves alongside.

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  6. Matteo! These are just gorgeous, the greens are stunning. That's a challenging color, it's good to see how you achieved it.

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  7. Thanks very much everybody for the encouragement!

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  8. I love all the imperfections Matteo. I think there are more varieties of green than of any other color. You could spend a lifetime mixing them. Enjoy the process!

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