Guest Blog: Lisa Solomon on Finding Lavender with Watercolor

Hi! I’m Lisa Solomon, a mixed media artist who moonlights as an author/illustrator, educator/college professor, occasional curator and graphic designer. My latest book published by Hardie Grant is Art Craft Color- a book that offers 20 beautiful craft/art projects in all colors of the rainbow. Today I’d like to walk you through my attempt at Courtney Cerruti’s project - “Finding Lavender”.

The fun thing about color is that it is SO personal. When you read the word “lavender” a color most likely pops into your head. And your lavender is different from mine, and is different from Courtney’s and different from your best friend’s. Exercises like this help you learn how to find colors you like and mix colors faster.

If you want to play along - you’ll need the following:

• Some watercolors- I’m using this Grabie 56 color foldable set. This set comes with a water fillable brush, but I busted out a few extras. I also pre-filled the swatch sheet for the watercolors so I know what the colors look like painted.
• A sketchbook with watercolor paper, but a single sheet would also work
• A rag to wipe your brushes

To find Lavender, Courtney explains that she tried several combos of colors from her vast collection of watercolors.

First Combo: potters pink + neutral tint.

Because the Grabie set doesn’t have the exact colors from the example, I had to find matches. For potters pink I ended up using 3 colors to get close (see image).

Placing even-ish sizes of piles of both those colors in the mixing/palette area, I proceed to add a bit of the darker color to the lighter one, painting a sample as I go. If needed, I squeeze the tiniest bit of water from my brush.

Adding a bit more of the dark to the lighter pile, I continue to swatch until I basically mix both piles together.

Moving on to the Second Combo: opera pink + indigo.

As I worked to add the dark indigo to the opera, I noticed my last swatch looked deep purple. I presumed that if I added more water it would desaturate into more of a lavender color. So I squeezed my brush, dabbed on my rag and painted again. I drew the arrow to indicate it was the same paint ration, just watered down. This is the true joy/magic of watercolors. Practicing water control can give you so many more colors. As you get more transparent the tone of your color also shifts.

For the Third Combo: quinacridone pink and cobalt.

This combo got dark right away - as a very warm purple. Then as I added more and more blue it got closer to my own version of a blue purple - the base for lavender. I also added water in all stages here as I knew the water downed versions would read more lavender. With that last swatch I added water twice!

Finally the Fourth Combo:

I had a hard time picking my vermillion substitute as vermillion is a red that leans very heavily orange. I went for the more orange red, but mixed with indigo it became brown [see first swatched on left]. That was because it was orange enough to compliment the blue in the indigo. True complimentary colors [blue/orange, yellow/purple, green/red] mix neutrals aka browns or grays. I knew immediately I had to move toward a brighter/pinker red if I was going to get any sort of purple. After switching to a more crimson red I got much closer, although you can see I had to add water 4 times for the purple cast to finally really come through. 

After all this practice I thought I should see if any other colors from this set would help me create a lavender. And from all my mixing I guessed that the tulip pink - F63 and yale blue - C34 would mix to create a good one. In fact it did! I thought that combo would only get better if I created a tint - which is adding that color to white. So I tried that as well. One with more of the tulip and one with a bit more of the blue.

I hope you give finding lavender a try! I think I’m off to find mustard yellow next…. I also hope this has inspired you to check out Art Craft Color. -Lisa