Today, I’ve got another gouache painting from my little book of sketches themes around certain color palettes. Today’s inspiration was a selection of vibrant fruit colors. Gummy bears seemed like a fun challenge to paint, so when I thought of the palette’s name, they were automatically became the subject!
With these colors, my challenge was balancing the sheer number of really vibrant hues into a painting that didn’t look really garish. Anchoring everything on my single light, neutral color (in this case, a misty blue-green gray) let everything pop and gave the warm, tropical colors something light and cool to contrast on. Using cranberry as my darkest color in the shadows kept everything looking semi-realistic, too.
I want to challenge myself to do some neutral-themed color work, soon. However, I invested in a nicer gouache palette this winter, and now I can finally mix all of these super-vibrant colors. It’s hard to stop dipping into things like magenta, and blaze-orange when they’re new in your collection!