There are just some colors that just hit you, stay with you, that you fall for. Turquoise is that for me. It’s blue, it’s green. It’s sometimes the color of the sky, some places it’s the color of the sea, it’s the color of the sun dress my mom made me when I was five years old. It’s the color on the edge of the shadow of the freshly cut grass. It’s the color of my turquoise bracelet, my wallet and you get the idea. Does that make it my favorite color? I guess it does!
But I do think it’s more than just a fleeting infatuation. Turquoise serves as a handy transition tone in many cases. I googled transition tone and came up with lots of references to video and even interior design but very little in painting. To me, transitions are very important in painting. We want to transition from the foreground to the middle to the background. We want our gradations to be gradual and convincing. We want the scale of the elements to recede in perspective. We want transitions.
Sometimes a color that vibrates on the edge of another color serves as this transition. I find aqua a useful and trusty aid here. Of course I don’t put a color where it doesn’t make any sense, but I will push and even invent and I don’t need much of an excuse to do this pushing! I want to play with color!
I often think about something Richard Mckinley always said, “Color gets the glory and value does the work”. It’s very true, but letting yourself fall in love is not a bad thing!
Once again, happy painting!
With Warmest Regards,
Marla
