The Cornell Lab Bird Academy › Discussion Groups › Nature Journaling and Field Sketching › Capturing Nature’s Color Palettes
-
-
I had trouble uploading the image with the text, so I uploaded the image first. I had more success with the beautiful gray crowned Rosy Finch than the Wasatch mountains. It was my first experience with the Sakura watercolor set with water brush. I experimented with gouache earlier in the year and I had a color chart. I had to make my own color chart with the Sakura water color set. The water brush is a new experience. I am glad to have the experience with the gray crowned rosy finch with its colors of rich brown, gray, pink, gray and black. I will never see this beautiful bird unless I travel to the Pacific Northwest, maybe someday I will get the chance. Working with available light is always a challenge and with watercolor you can provide the rich tones you might not be able to see with the ambient light provided. This is a big advantage with watercolor, so I will keep working with it.
-
This was my firs texperience with watercolors. I've mostly used colored pencils. It was actually more difficult thanI expected. In fact after it dried I went back in with some colored pencil, a black gel pen and a white gel pen. I did have trouble mixing the browns in my palette. I would get to a spot where the color wasn't quite right, but I don't know my paints well enough to know how to get to where I wanted. Yes, focussing on the colors made me notice the different shades of gray as well as the different sades of brown. I also became very aware of the patterns in the feathers and my own inexperience in capturing them.
-
the finch color palette
-
-
No previous watercolor experience except during the Watercolor Basics for Birds Workshop. I really enjoy attempting to use watercolors. For me, blending seems to be somewhat difficult when trying to get the exact same colors as on photos. I seem to be more successful with blending when painting my drawings. Of course, that leaves a margin for slightly different tones, tints and shades. I worked on blending colors for the bird. Realized how many different shades of gray in that one photo and how to work with the white, gray, and black to achieve the desired colors. The breast required much blending.
-
I dabbled a little bit with watercolors before but this is the first time I created a palette for a picture. It was fun experimenting to match the color I see in the picture or of an actual subject.
-
This is the first time I have ever used a palette. I love the colors. It is a beautiful exercise.
-
-
I have used watercolors before. I am happy with my palettes even though some of the colors took a lot of experimenting. The palettes are for the two pictures from the lesson.
-
We have had torrential rain all day so I didn't go outside to practice and worked on a houseplant instead! The colours are a bit pale as I used to much water - the red in particular should be stronger. Hopefully this will get better over time.
-
I have done watercolour previously but never got the hang of it. I have trouble controlling the water. I found these exercises very helpful in looking closely at the colours to match them - I realised that the colours weren't always what I expected eg the rocks in the Wasatch mountains have a hint of red in them, whereas I would probably have treated them as grey. As with drawing it is a matter of painting what is there. Doing the palette adding small quantities of colour at a time and testing was helpful. If you add to much of a strong colour it overwhelms the weaker one, especially when adding black to deepen the shades. I also made notes of the colours I used for future reference.
-
I really enjoyed this exercise. I learned how to mix colors and handle the moisture issue I always have with too much water. I still can't seem to get the detail I want, but it will take a lot of practice. My columbine came out ok, but the leaves were a bit wonky--too heavy an outline rather that a thin edging of maroon.
-
I have never seriously used watercolors before other than as a kid. I've never felt like I had a good eye for color so I felt a bit intimidated getting started. It was easier than I thought, I think because I got so involved in the process - studying my subject and then playing with the mix of colors. I really wanted to focus on the birds that have returned to my backyard this spring. The weather has been so terrible the last few days that they mostly disappeared, so I just looked their pictures up on the Cornell website. I was pleased with the colors I ended up with, though I wasn't so sure about them at the time. Knowing where to start was a challenge, that is, I wondered about which initial color to use and whether to start light or dark and go from there. Focusing so closely on the colors made me realize that there was a relationship between the colors in the palette. For example, I started with my brightest color and then worked on the more muted colors, and as I did this I found that I wanted to add the color I had previously created to the color I was creating as it was closer to what I needed than what
was in the paint set. Nature had a plan for these birds, I guess!
-
I enjoyed these images, especially the meadowlark.
-
-
I found this to be harder than I expected. I had trouble regulating the amount of water that was going into the paint. I found the beak of the bird color to be the hardest to mix because it isn't a bright yellow, but when I would put in darker colors, it was easy to overpower the yellow and I would start over again. I can see how experience makes this easier!
-
I've been painting and exploring with watercolor for a the past five years, beginner level. Watercolor is fun, but not easy to paint with. Yet, I'm learning so much through this course, I found it easy to mix and experiment. I created a color pallet for my pansies, which I bought a week ago so as to paint them.. I didn't think of creating a pallet though! Now I did. It is more fun and the colors pop out when I create a pallet. I noticed the brightness of colors, Also, I noticed the same color has tints, tones and shade. This made it easy to paint the subject. Some colors relate to each other. The color theory make is so visible for me. This was an amazing experience. Below the experimentation I did with colors, tint, tone and shade. The pallet of colors.
-
I forgot to upload this image.
-
-
This is my first experience with watercolours. It's not as difficult as I thought but I find that my colours are fading a bit after they dry. I am using my children's dollar store watercolours so perhaps I need to upgrade.
-
-
-
I mixed five colors for each of the paintings Wasatch Mt. and the rosy finch. Each of these colors is mixed, none is straight from the paint set. I would use them in different values, lighter or darker as I rendered the painting . I would also need to mix more colors as needed if I was doing these paintings.
-
-
This is my first experience with water colors and am looking forward to playing with tine, tone, and shades. My biggest challenge is getting the water amount right as I seem to be putting in too much and my paint is very runny. I am impressed and overwhelmed with the pictures posted to this group.
-
-
I haven't used watercolors in 25+ years. Very fun to mix colors!
-
@Karen I enjoyed viewing the above two images of your watercolor experience.
-
-
This is not my first watercolor experience at all. I took a watercolor class during my Master's degree in drawing/(oil) painting, BUT that was 40 years ago! So, this is great review. I ran into trouble, though, because the set I ordered did not have black....but found some in a tube to use. I can see some of the colors looked good while mixing but needed some tweaking. For example, the cloud color should be a little more blue and the mountains should be more neutral. The scanning seems to be a problem for colors sometimes because the orange trees look purple-grey on the scan but look orange on my original paper. But it feels great to be doing watercolors again and I look forward to doing a watercolor bird!
-
Here is my attempt at a watercolor of a white-throated sparrow based on a photo. Still too cold here to do anything outside. I have played around with watercolors a little in the past. I do find it difficult, but I was relatively happy with the colors here. Doing the legs and feet with watercolors was the most challenging part of this.
H
-
This is My first time with watercolors but have taken a class in oils years ago. My biggest challenge is applying white to the eye of birds -the underneath and the reflective dot in the pupil. Oils allow you to just paint over after it has dried. Maybe I need to relax the finished product.
-
I decided to use watercolors with an Iceland Poppy growing in the garden. I have very little experience with watercolors. It was difficult for me to create depth and detail with watercolors (vs. line drawings). I felt I was able to get some color variation with the petals but the challenge I wasn't up for was using watercolors on the glass vase. Question: how to use watercolors with transparency.
-
I usually work in acrylics and have only played around with water colors - its so much harder! Mixing colors is challenging but I think just requires more practice. I found it hard to keep the water from shrinking back into a droplet rather then spreading into a larger amount, if I add more water it washes out, so it requires a lot more color from the palette than you think. The amount of brush washing is more than you think as well. You touch a color every few seconds, and you need to wash out the old before adding more of another. just a lot more steps than you would think. But overall its been fun to experiment and I think just requires more practice!
Read More: