Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Indigo and Opera is the new Black

Where the volcano meets the sea…
Watercolour and crayon
©2011 Charlene Brown
Like last week’s painting, this is one of the places my grandchildren went swimming along the spectacular road to Hana on the island of Maui, part of the Hawaiian chain.
The view from the top of the cliff was fantastic, and when I made my first sketch here, I wondered what the chances were of actually conveying this wondrous sight in watercolour… I had no trouble deciding what colour to use to capture the effect of the waves crashing against the rocks – Prussian Blue usually behaves this way whether I want it to or not! Making the rocks and beach, composed almost entirely of black lava, look like anything other than the entrance to a coal mine, was another matter all together. Finally, I settled on a mixture of Indigo and Opera.