Six years of a delectable bottle green in high school has led to my disaffection for green in most of its manifestations. The more observant of you will have noticed that there is not a whole lot of green in my art.
So, when I started creating this child portrait painting, with its original dominating yellows, I naturally reached for its complement, purple. The warm purple I chose for the background just wasn’t working, so I changed it to a cool purple. Then darker, then lighter but NO – the painting was not happy. It kept telling me I needed to use green.
Reluctantly, I picked out a virgin yellow-green from my set and instantly knew that was what the painting wanted.
I had discovered my first seriously bossy artwork.
As usual, I started with my preliminary sketch.
Preliminary sketch
Again, as usual, I proceeded to the eyes.
Adding the eyes
I’m just so predictable – next the values on the face.
Adding values in the face
And here is where I brought in the green. It’s not just one green – a series of dark greens, yellow greens and raw umber… all of which lead to a general greenness.
Working on the background
Next, more work on the background and the hands. I am enjoying the flow of the shawl, the way the angles of the shawl mirror the hat and chair. I also like the triangular composition.
Adding hands, cups and table
A little more work on defining the form in the face. I tried to be more gentle in this piece – as the palette is very different to the one I normally use, the overall mood of the piece if different. I usually use complementary colours and often more than one pair of complements in each painting. This results in very colourful, vibrant pieces. Here, for the first time, I have used an analagous colour scheme, using colours adjacent to each other on the colour wheel. Yellow, red/orange, green. There is a splash of blue for the eyes but I resisted the strong urge to carry that blue through the rest of the painting. This painting seems softer, stiller, but no less cute.
Tea Party!
And there we have the Tea Party! A gorgeous little girl, inviting you to join in her game with those huge blue eyes of hers. I hope you like her as much as I do.
NEW: to see which of my works are available for sale, click here: https://juliasattout.com/gallery/sale/