Think Pink!

Peony Love Affair Oil. A.W. Trusty

I am always inspired to paint the luscious and radiant colors of our peonies, especially the pink and coral ones. I have found that it can be a real challenge to match the range of sunlit pinks bouncing off and through their petals. Depending on the variety of peony, the colors can be soft, almost white, to brazenly intense! In temperature, the colors can range from cool, near-violet in the shadows, to warm and flashy orange-pink in the sunlit petals. One thing the colors are not, however, is easy to mix!

We teach our students with a focus on a split primary palette—a warm and cool of the three primaries along with white and black. Within that limited palette we work with them to create almost every other color needed. However, we’ve found that there are some pinks in nature that are very difficult to create without the help of special pigments not generally found in our split primary palette. Part of the problem oc…