color me october

Color is such a powerful force, yet we are so often unaware of it. I love the colors of October. Recently, my illo students worked on a 10 color palette of their personal favorites, to become better acquainted with their tendencies. It was a fun exercise, and I created the one above with bits of my favorite pastel papers, as I rarely do color on a white background.

Thomas made one with paint, got frustrated, and made a collage version that better captured his taste.

Part of the exercise was to guess whose palettes were whose.  Juliana stumped us all. Her work is delicate and detailed, but this was her palette. Who knew?

Students also had to name their colors, and that was the lyrical piece: Juliana had names like "OMG coral" and "typhonic red."

Cyndi swiped her favorites from the Photoshop palettes. Hey! But, she had some of the best names, like "Connecticut Pink" and "Rubber Red."

The whole thing gave me a new eye as I set out for the next day. Thank you, ninjas! I saw a catchy color palette in this neighbor's collection of buoys...

Then, these funky mushrooms, growing in Ted's dirt side yard on the way to the beach..

And my favorite red, seen on a very weathered ferry bench at the edge of the beach wall...

You can see my red fixation in these flower boxes outside my studio window:

All this color vibration was just enough to buoy me to begin my Sketchbook Project, at last! I was having major performance anxiety, with this blank sketchbook destined for a showing in 6 cities.
Jeez, the pressure. I broke the ice on my "boys and girls" topic with one of my favorite subjects, seen here before heading out the door to middle school. Normally, I like to use smudgy materials, like charcoal or pastel, but give the nature of the handling, I opted for colored pencil.

Time to keep drawing. More sketches to come. Meanwhile, I'll drink the autumn colors with abandon.