Thinking Pink for the Holidays
I’m not sure what it was that possessed me to use the Pepto Bismol pink in this age-old painting of mine. I had used pink many times before, but it was the usual pink that comes to mind-washed out baby, fuzzy 70’s robe pink…typical. This new pink was daring for me and it was exactly what the piece needed to finish it off. I sent the painting off to my gallery who kept it for a year before telling me, rather condescendingly, that they showed it to a few clients and “they just couldn’t deal with the pink.” The painting was then promptly sent home with me where I hung it in the studio vowing to use the same color in every painting I made for the rest of my life. A few months later, I decided to part with it one more time and gave it to my new gallery. To my (not so) surprise, it sold right away…as well as graced the cover of Encaustic Art by Jennifer Margell. Ever since then, I’ve been wantonly using pink whenever I please. I must admit that this new wave of pink painters, brought on by the Barbie film popularity has got me declaring my pink proprietorship from days of yore, exploring new shades and ways of using them.
One shade I just discovered has got me rethinking pink in exciting ways because I never would have thought of it as pink, but yet…it is. I used it in the painting above that I showed at Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Show in September and could have sold that painting five times it was so popular. Then at the airport traveling to/from Ireland, I saw the same color on a number of cute carryons. The clincher came when I discovered the same color in this year’s R&F Holiday Edition Encaustic Set and Holiday Edition Pigment Stick Set. The color is Provence Red and is a festive cross between Quinacradone Magenta and Cobalt Violet- if you haven’t fallen in love with the Holiday Edition yet, this color is only available as a Limited Edition within the set and not available for individual sale. This is a special color and obviously quite popular in both art and fashion, so I decided to see what I could do with it.
The festive Holiday Edition Set comes with a cool sticker too!
I always like to make encaustic monoprints with new colors as it helps me to see the color paired with some of my favorites as well as slightly mixes the colors together right on the palette. I like the lack of control I have over the colors using this method and it allows the colors to shine in their gorgeous light. Below is a set of encaustic monoprints on rice and Masa papers. I added some of my favorite dark colors for contrast-Turkey Umber Greenish, Payne’s Gray and Indigo. These colors often go overlooked because they are so dark in the packaging, but paired with bright colors like those in the Holiday Edition, they just sing. I also added my favorite mix of Neutral and Titanium White and of course, the Phthalo Blue and Phthalo Turquoise and Cobalt Blue because they look so amazing with Ancient Gold, a recent addition to my favorites list. I always add the bling last on my paintings and monoprints and this sparkly festive color never disappoints, it’s the extra special frosting on the cake and always seems to magically bring all the colors and design elements together…below are the monoprints I made using the the Holiday Edition and all of the colors used in the making-The bottom row are the colors included in the Holiday Edition Set. If you haven’t rounded out your R&F Holiday Gift List, read Essential Encaustic Paint Colors for the Beginner and Encaustic Paint Colors I Can’t Do Without on my old blog for my complete list of favorite R&F Colors. For a short video of me making these monoprints, visit this link on my Youtube Channel.
Last, below is a sample painting I made during my Encaustic Basics Workshop at Chester County Art Association. I subconsciously used all of the colors in the Holiday Edition and it came out so happy and festive. I can’t wait to dig into scraping and carving out a composition, which will eventually serve as a ground for an encaustic collage. Visit this and this and this and this videos showing the scraping and carving process on my Youtube Channel. This and several small paintings, plus some new products are all in the works to be added to My Shop for the Holidays, but that’s a subject for another blog post :)))
