Colour Choices and the Elephant

Well.... having decided to paint subjects where I feel I have strengths I have had a productive couple of days. Today I am hoping to paint for most of the day and am sticking to an animal theme, as part of my efforts to build up a themed collection. I don't want to be known solely as an animal painter but have been having a lot of fun with the birds I have painted recently and decided to work on this elephant this morning.

I do know people say they recognise my work and I think that is partly because of the colours I use so decided to step out of the box today and use a combination I have never used before... not a hint of purple in sight!! I used my colour planets to check out my ideas and liked the look of the colours I chose... a bit random but somehow they worked, so the colours were

Perylene Green (of course!!)
Helio Turquoise
Burnt Sienna
Alizarin Crimson
Raw Sienna (tried quin gold but that didn't seem to give me the feel I wanted)

I could have used any colours, as you will know from some of my previous posts, as long as you don't fiddle and let the colours mix happily on the page, lots of unexpected combinations will work for you and create unique and interesting work. There are so many colours we can try... forgot to use Perylene Marroon on this, I think that would have worked well too.

I know a lot of artists stick to a very limited palette of say about 12 colours and that works really well for them...... I guess they understand how these paints work and get to know them "intimately" but I prefer to have lots of colours and treat it as a challenge to find a combination which works and is appropriate for my subject. What I do however is stick to a limited colour choice for each painting rarely using more than 5 or 6 colours in any piece and often less. That way I get a harmonious feel to the painting with the colours echoing around my subject. It's a long time since I painted an elephant apart from the xmas one and I will do more as I have enjoyed this one... no drawing by the way... that part seems to be finally getting better!!