"Three Cities in Three Days" ink & watercolor 8 x 9 - randomly chosen palette

 

The Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge for January was "3 random colors".  I used watercolor, and blindly pointed at three corners of my watercolor palette, which is arranged by color/temperature.  By aiming at three different areas of the palette, I knew I was getting a bit of variety.  I chose vermilion, sap green, and cerulean (see picture).  My first instinct was to pick again, but I wanted to maintain the integrity of the challenge and learn something.  Here are a few thoughts from this challenge

• None of these colors is very cool, so I needed to adjust my temperature scale
• The most yellow I could achieve was with sap green with a little vermiliion.
• I could make beautiful neutrals, browns, grays, using these three colors. 
• The darkest I could get was a charcoal-ish blue gray but if I pushed it a tiny bit beyond its neutral balance, I was into an orange or green or blue (not really neutral anymore, and not as dark as I wanted.)
• I adjusted my buildings to look a little terracotta colored, so maybe Italy or Spain, based on the colors I could achieve.  
• When I used vermilion on its own, as a color option, it was much too strong and overpowered the other options.  There is nothing in this composition that I wanted drawing your eye that much, so I neutralized all the vermilion I used.
• I enjoyed the challenge, and will randomly choose three colors again to see what happens  

Take a look at all the Girls Just Wanna Paint interpretations of the theme by clicking the link.