I wondered how hard it would be to paint one using the Zorn palette
Why Zorn when the four colours (white, yellow ochre, bright red/orange, and black) have been used by many traditional arts around the world? From Haida Gwaii, the Cowichan, and other First Peoples from the area where I live, to India, China, Italy, Africa... all over the world, we see these four colours making up a traditional palette. And rightly so, they are fantastic!
In Ancient Greece, it was called the Apelles Palette, many Renaissance painters used a variation on it, only with the newly discovered vermillion. Anyway, there are about 36 hundred names for these four colours. But I can spell Zorn. So Zorn it is.
For this, I'm experimenting with white in watercolours and a couple of different blacks. Granulating mars black for the background and interesting how white can bring forward or push back certain subjects.
It's also around this time, I'm borrowing a lot of books from the library on the history of watercolour and discover that it's not until about 1960 that white became forbidden in watercolours.
I think teachers might have had trouble explaining/understanding that white and black aren't good at values - they don't lighten or darken colours well. In watercolour this is done with saturation (the amount of paint) more than anything. Since they couldn't explain/understand this, they forbid white (and black) in the classroom. And people took this to mean that all white and black are forbidden in watercolours.
I think that's a shame as these two can do amazing effects. Just look at some of the old masters from Turner, Constable, Van Gogh, Emily Car... none of them were afraid of white or "body colour" in their watercolours. Why are we?
