The Limited Palette always Impresses

I picked up a photo of a young woman I had painted once upon a time and thought I'd like to explore it further. I've always absolutely loved the artwork of Toulouse Lautrec. The subject matter of the dancing show girls, the night life of the French bougousie, and the dedication of the young toulouse have always intrigued me. Looking closely at it I know he uses a lot of yellow and alizarin crimson and maybe some blue, maybe some green. So I put blobs of alizarin, Indian yellow and Ultramarine blue along with titanium white on my glass palette and using a small brush and the red I sketched her in. THis is the final result. After a while I felt like I was simply doing a value study but the limitations of color make it much easier than being overwhelmed with a full palette. It facilitated the ease of asking the simple questions that propel us around the canvas. Is this space lighter or darker, warmer or cooler. Easy peasy. I am going to continue this little exercise for a while. I find that limited palettes are kinder to the eye and the harmony is automatic.

I have now had the pleasure of selling these composition books and the response I am getting is "LOVELY" and quick shipment from amazon. They are indeed a bargain if you have amazon prime and do not have to go through the rigmarole of shipping costs etc. I am so fortunate that I always documented my paintings with as high of a resolution as I could afford. At first it was a matter of actually driving the painting an hour away to a "Lab" where they took 4 x 5 transparencies. Then we were digitizing the transparencies. After that and the driving I decided to invest in an epson art scanner which did a very good job but was limited to a 12 x 16 glass panel. I learned that I could do larger paintings by scanning the painting section by section. I then found a way to "stitch" the pieces together on photoshop and had quite a high resolution "large" file which was perfectly suitable for prints and products. I speak about "stitching" the pieces together. I did it one segment at a time and then blurred the edges with the clone stamp. HOWEVER LET ME TELL YOU ....I found out a few years back that photoshop (the most amazing editing software around) has a feature under edit called automate and merge cells which will do it automatically. GAME CHANGER! THAT is still the procedure I use but I have a 24 mp canon and I still divide the canvas into fourths or sixths and then use the camera instead of the massive scanner. I use photoshop to automate the stitching. I have large files of my favorite paintings or seminal works that were part of a series. I am loading them all onto Amazon and making the 120 page college ruled books. They are pretty elegant and hey! you don't need just one, you need many. As handy as digital notetaking and planning is, the pleasure of scanning through written pages will never be replaced. AND as you all know the act of writing things down is therapeutic for the brain and helpful for the mere process of memorization. I am so pleased with how these turned out AND the price point: Here are a few. There are many more that you will see if you search Sally Rosenbaum Disclaimer.. I receive a small commission if you click and buy.