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Thursday, August 20, 2015

Choosing Pastels to Paint The Glow of Sunshine

'A Little Slice of Heaven'               4x11                 pastel             ©Karen Margulis
purchase painting on Etsy  $75
 It is a must have color family. It is a bit illusive much like the effect that it helps capture in a painting. There is nothing quite like the warm glow of the sun as it gets lower in the horizon. Everything it touches glows with its warmth. No wonder it is called the Magic Hour!  But how do we capture this glow in a painting? What color is it? Salmony- pinkish -orangey -yellow?

A reader asked: "Can you recommend source for the light peach colours you use? Looked at portrait sets. Other sets seem to have dark yellows or oranges, not that lovely light peach colour."
There is a certain color family that I like to use for the glow of the setting sun. It really isn't one particular color or brand even. 

Since I don't write down color names or numbers it is always a gamble and often a surprise when it is time to replace a well used color. My goal is to find a color  and value to match as closely as I can. I do have several brands that I like to choose from. 

I browse through color charts online and order my selections open stock. I may not always get the exact color but I get something close and it keeps my palette fresh.  Here are a few of my favorite brands along with the color ranges I select from for the sunset glow. Click on the links to see more about each brand.

Unison pastels Red 1-18 www.unisoncolour.com

Unison pastels Orange 1-18 www.unisoncolour.com

Terry Ludwig Vibrants www.terryludwig.com


Great American Artworks  www.greatpastels.com



Schminke pastels   www.schmincke.de
As you can see I am showing a variety of colors from pink to peach to orange-yellow. I like to stock a variety of these colors. I use them not only in sunset clouds but also on the edges of tree trunks or anywhere the sun kisses. 

Do you have a favorite peachy color? I'd love for you to share in the comments!


2 comments:

Sue Marrazzo Fine Art said...

REALLY beautiful!

robertsloan2art said...

Sennelier's original 80 color half sticks assortment has some nice peach tints. So did my 120 Unisons half sticks box - lots, actually. One very useful one in my 60 Rembrandt half sticks set. Both of the Great Americans half sticks sets have them. I love those colors, especially as I also paint flowers so often. Mount Visions have a lot of them. Most really large sets will have a good assortment, it's what you get with warm reds and orange tints.

Where they don't show up necessarily is landscape sets. I tend to prefer general assortments over landscape sets because they will be short on some essential landscape colors I'm used to reaching for. They may not have a deep violet or a lavender or those peach tints and put in more close variations of olive greens and sky blues instead. Sometimes their choice of sky blues leaves me scratching my head too, but not so bad if it's done for a region.

Then again, I paint mostly with a 12 color wheel, tints and shades. The more a collection fills that out, the easier it is to paint any subject. Muted colors and tints are mostly convenience to me except for a grayed lavender, blue-grays and green-grays.