Typically, an advent calendar is 24 days long, but I’ll be traveling in the coming days so I’ve decided to end it here, on day 20! I will conclude by showing you my experiments with my last two pulls, both watercolor paints: Cobalt Violet and Venetian Red.
Day 19: Cobalt Violet
This is the most recent color I’ve spotlighted. I tried it for both a skyscape and a floral.
The skyscape is based on a contail photo I snapped same day.
I’ll be first to admit it doesn’t really work – not just because of the purple; I didn’t really make it look like anything. Still, purple’s the wrong color.
The floral is based on an Unsplash reference.
Cobalt Violet is better suited for the florals. Still, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed using it. It was fun enough to swatch out wet, but using it dry was pretty labor intensive since it dries so hard and weak.
Venetian Red
This is a color I came to love when doing the blues & brown challenge, where I discovered it can make interesting sky corals. What I wanted to test this time was whether it can make deep reds – Alizarin Crimson hues – when mixed with cool red/pink quinacridones. So I started with some swatching.
My initial thought while this was wet was, “Oh, it didn’t work; the Venetian Red is too light-valued, and since it’s opaque, adding more doesn’t help.” But once it all dried, the mixes – especially those with more Quin Red – looked very deep to me, just the shades of deep luscious crimson that I was hoping for! Unlike most paints which lighten as they dry, VR seems to darken a bit, which is helpful in this case.
Darker, cooler PR202 magenta mixes even deeper reds, almost Perylene Maroon-ish.
I decided to put these into action, starting with a floral this time.
Admittedly they didn’t scan especially well, but in person I generally found the dark reds from VR + QM more pleasing than those with red + blue or red + Indian Red, which always seem to me too black or violet and not red enough.
Just to round things out, I did another sunset with the VR. I used an Unsplash+ reference photo, so I can’t repost it for free – you’ll have to follow the link.
I did end up adding both Naples Yellow Deep and Quin Red to either end, which I realize in retrospect I could have made coral with and dispensed with VR altogether, so it’s not as convincing an argument for VR in the sky as I initially thought. Still, the coral of desaturated VR is in the mix, and also desaturates the violets gently.
Reflections on the Advent Calendar Challenge
As a distracting from having a commercial advent calendar, I’d say this was a success! I had just as much fun, if not more so, re-investigating supplies I’d already picked out for myself and previously bought, compared to a mystery selection of new items. For one thing, I know all the supplies I have are things I want! And it actually felt like a pleasant luxury to set aside the time to explore things that I feel have more potential, compared to always moving onto the next new thing.
It was also fun to randomize which supply I used each day; it provided me some direction which I don’t always have. Still, I think 3 weeks felt a bit long; one of the reasons I’m ending a few days earlier than I strictly need to is that I’m ready to be unrestricted again! I have my own ideas for things I’d like to do or try which don’t always fit into the prompt.
I also found it difficult to stick to the promise I made myself that I’d just swatch or noodle around if I felt tired. Because I was posting daily, I felt pressure to “make something”, and also to turn it around quickly since I’d have a new supply the next day. When I’m not doing a challenge, I often take more than one day to finish a piece, and it’s nice to have that leeway. I actually kind of liked daily posting as a way to reduce pressure on each individual post, but I’m also looking forward to taking a few days off, and to making posts that are on a specific topic of interesting instead of a grab bag.
Something I noticed during this challenge: I intentionally mixed up the supplies and included some pen & ink supplies and other materials, but I was always most glad when a watercolor paint came up. After nearly four years of painting and three years of blogging about it, I still just looooove watercolor!