News — colours

Last week I shared an uninvited look into a little bit of my process. I thought I'd share another now, this time looking into how I play with colour on my landscapes. Here's my drawing of Newhaven Harbour. My landscapes take around 8-12 hours to draw. Natural shapes such as sky and sea take less time than buildings. (For example, this view of the three bridges over the Firth of Forth took forever because of the underside of the road bridge, which I thought I might never finish.) Once the primary drawing is completed, using colours based on the original...

Something that no one ever asks me is 'where do I come up with the colours for my work?' I'm going to explain it anyway and illustrate it with an example, my take on the famous #ScotsLanguage saying 'It's a braw, bricht moonlit nicht the nicht'.   Harry Lauder used to follow that with 'an if ye can say that, yer aw richt'. These days, I feel more like if you can type that, yer aw richt. Trying to make 'night' fingers type 'nicht' is a bugger. Anyway. The colours. I get colour palettes from all sorts of sources. I put...