While my wife and 6 year old are off at dress rehearsals for the Nutcracker, my younger daughter and I spent some time painting together. Not wanting to get into anything too involved, I did another 5×7 tree study out the back dining room window. It’s a grey, rainy day, so to add some interest, I punched up the color on the tree to the right with some pops of pure perylene maroon.
This was made up of:
Nickel Azo Yellow
Quinacridone Burnt Orange
Viridian
Perylene Maroon
French Ultramarine
Cerulean Blue (just in the sky a bit)
Prussian Blue
Come to think of it, those are the pigments I use most, though my favorite blue on its own is cobalt, which I’m adding back into my palette along with the W&N limited edition Titanate Yellow, which is a Turner like chrome yellow. I am still experimenting with what’s right for me, what’s right for the feel of a painting I can produce, what to apply to some big pieces, to something with a thesis or a question. Nothing better than sorting that out with my daughter doing Turner inspired color studies beside me.
Corey Aber 
Nice way to spend a grey day and nice way to liven it up with maroon.
Wow, very nice work, both the foliage and the tree bark textures. I can get really lost in the bark of a tree, but lack courage to blend in extra colors. I really like the threads of color running throughout the trunk, making the tree more dynamic. Nice to see what a small 5 x 7″ composition can yield. I have just gotten a 16 x 20″ underway and already I’m lost. But it’s a good sense of “lost.”
Thanks! Glad you noticed all the colors in the bark. When I saw the John Singer Sargent exhibit last summer, I was impressed with his use of adjacent and overlapping colors, especially in his ships paintings. I guess I am trying to take some of that, but take greater advantage of the luminosity of watercolor–something you do very well. Having said that, I am starting to think about how to use watercolor to do some film noir style images, so color and luminosity might be absent there, though if I can achieve luminosity, that special glow from watercolor, in a monochrome, I’d be thrilled. Just searching for the best way to get the darks for that without getting a tube color.