"Red and Green"

($40.00....mounted on a 1/8" depth clayboard panel)

"Red and green fuel the warm association of pleasant memories." Every year about this time, I have this urge to go buy a berry bush of some sort. Of course they promptly die when the Texas heat arrives, but they cause me to be in the Christmas spirit. You might want to try this experiment. Go anywhere where there are decorated Christmas trees, close your eyes, and then open them and see which color combination takes your breath away. It will most likely be red and green.

Direct complements deserve careful attention because they are so powerful. With red and green, it is important to pay attention to the percentage of each color used. Berry bushes are so eye catching because they have a hugh percentage of green sprinkled with bits of red. It is not as pleasing to have this reversed. And if the percentage is 50/50...it can be disturbing to view. It is fun to look through decorator magazines and pay attention to the percentages of the colors used and then try to duplicate those percentages in a piece of art.

Another thing I am trying to do in this piece is continue to practice with a Speedball C-4 nib. Yves Leterme thinks it is prudent to become proficient with this nib so I have been picking it up more frequently, but it is way out of my comfort zone. But to quote myself..."The learning curve is easier after realizing that all things are difficult before they are easy." My goal for next year is to include more expressive and gestural writing. (We'll see how that works out.) But for December, I would like to "kick it up a notch" with the pointed pen. It may be procrastination on my part, but what would Christmas be without all of that flourishing! Just something to think about.