Color Play

Today, I'm sharing three new pieces of art and one zentangle inspired art (ZIA) that I did awhile back. They are all different, different techniques, different media, but each was conceived with a certain technique in mind. Let me explain.

Prisming

Last week when I created the rainbow tulip, I had seen a YouTube video on using a watercolor technique called prisming. It involves drawing random lines through certain parts of the drawing (in my case the lilipad and the background). You begin coloring and when you reach a line, you change either the color's value or change the color. It's an interesting technique and though I didn't achieve the look I wanted in this piece, I still like the way it turned out. I probably should have used a watercolor paper instead of the Tomoe River paper in my daily journal.

Underpainting

This is a technique where you randomly paint colors and then draw a figure on top. You then paint the background in different colors so the drawn part only has the original colors.

As you can see, I began this piece by coloring the page in yellows, oranges and reds. I drew the turtle in white and used colored pencils to accentuate pieces of the turtle. I then colored the background in blues, purples and greens which are the complimentary colors of the original colors. I've done this technique with acrylics before but I used Inktense blocks this time. It is ink-based so once dry, you cannot re-activate the colors even when wet. I was afraid my background would be muddy since complimentary colors produce different shades of grays.  But I think it came out fine. 

The next two pieces are my entries for the Diva's Challenge. Please check out other entries here.

Lately, I've been enjoying using a black tile for my tangled pieces. As I mentioned before, It's a challenge to tangle without using a pencil first. I used the pattern called Loops to create this piece and used my Recollections brand opaque markers to color. I didn't even attempt to shade here. I think I'm going to use this pattern again for a zendala. 

I'm usually good about picking colors, but Immshaking my head on this one. I can't recall how I chose the colors. Purples, pinks and greens are colors I use often but adding orange, ultramarine, and tan to that just doesn't make sense. I do like the contrast of the black lettering against the colors. Perhaps some day, I will redo this one in different colors. 

Do you have a favorite color combination? I tend to use lots of secondary and tertiary colors, but hardly ever the primary.  Currently, I'm loving teal and purple. Have a great Tuesday!