Category: Colours

Spring is a perfect time to sort out and organise art supplies. The brighter days and spring flowers create colour that inspires creativity and makes me want to reacquaint myself with some of the art supplies that I’ve left languishing in palettes over the winter. I found the perfect swatch holders recently and so embarked…

If someone says greenish blue to me I think of a vivid turquoise, like that found on the back of a kingfisher or the colour of the Mediterranean on a sunny day. The colour given in Nature’s Palette (the book based on Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours) however, is a much more muted tone. It’s almost…

The colour of clouds, heavily laden with rain, ‘Blackish Grey’ isn’t an uplifting colour. Colours such as this, however, are often found in nature and are visually important in providing a neutral backdrop for more vibrant colours. In the book Nature’s Palette, this colour is given the references of flint, the back of the nuthatch…

A colour connected to nature and growth, green hues can evoke feelings of freshness and calm, but have also been connected to jealousy, poison and evil. ‘Emerald Green’, named after the gemstone, is a fresh mid-green, given the references of the Eurasian teal, ficus plant and (of course) emeralds in the Thames and Hudson Book,…

Complex and mysterious, purple is the colour of royalty and mysticism. Purples can be redder or bluer in tone and those that appear to have equal quantities of both can confuse our minds as our brains aren’t quite sure how to place them. The colour ‘Violet Purple’ as featured in the Thames and Hudson book,…

Red. The colour of passion, anger, post-boxes and ripe tomatoes. Red pigments have been used since the earliest cave paintings, but the colour is often problematic. Reds have often been poisonous or fade far too easily. The colour itself can overwhelm our senses and become too dominant if not used with care. The colour ‘Scarlet…

It’s been a bit grey lately on the Isle of Man, so to brighten things up we’ll focus on the cheerful shade of Gamboge Yellow in this instalment of ‘The Colours of Nature’. Gamboge is a yellow pigment obtained by extracting a gum resin from southeast Asian trees. It’s no longer used, due to being…

Butterflies, flowers and gorgeous blue! These things evoke impressions of spring and summer in my mind and are a balm to my soul on the many grey, cold days we’re getting lately. Luckily, the second in a series of posts about colours featured in the book Nature’s Palette, will concentrate on the colour ‘flax-flower blue’.…

With the emergence of spring flowers bringing some welcome colour to the countryside, there’s an opportunity to use a wider colour palette in our drawings of nature. Having reviewed the book, Nature’s Palette, I wanted to find out more about the colours it features and the species referred to as exemplifying them. I hope to…