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Painting my favorite subject with new Gamblin colors.

By Inna Cherneykina

      One of my favorite subjects to paint is persimmons. I paint persimmons every year in Fall, and their warm, luscious colors represent to me the spirit of the upcoming Holidays. I like to team them up with blue pots or vases to create beautiful color contrast.

      This year was a bit different, after receiving Award of Distinction from Gamblin, for my painting “Spring Melodies “ during 18th American Impressionist Society Show in Park City, Utah, I’ve decided to order few new colors, which I haven’t tried before.

      I’ve always had Cadmium Orange and Cadmium Red on my palette, those are great rich, opaque colors. During AIS show we had an excellent lecture on  “History of Oil Color” by Joe Gyurcsak, and he brought up how different opaque and transparent colors work mixed with other colors and I’ve decided to partner up my Red and Orange with Indian Yellow and Transparent Orange, two transparent colors from Gamblin.

     Another color from my palette, Cadmium Green, which I like a lot for its luminosity, but sometimes it could be a delicate color to harmonize if not mixed with other colors and I’ve decided to partner it with Gamblin Green Gold, which is very warm and semi-transparent. Another Green I’ve picked was Chromium Oxide Green, which was opaque and turned out to be an ideal color for leaves if mixed with white, primarily if a direct light was cool. Green Gold combined with Indian Yellow created a very appealing mixture which I used a lot for Persimmons leaves.

     I also picked Cadmium Lemon, opaque color in the yellow family and two Blues: opaque Cobalt Teal and transparent Phthalo Turquoise to complete my palette choices. Those two blue colors along with Ultramarine Blue, the regular choice on my palette, played very well as color for my blue pots.

     I also like to go out and paint seascapes, and those two colors were the great addition for Plein Ait painting. Cobalt Teal mixed with Cadmium Green created a color that I see a lot in the ocean when I paint in Carmel or Point Lobos.

      Colors I've picked turned out to be an excellent choice for my painting. Orange and Red mixed with white created very pure, luscious colors for my light areas, combined with opaque Orange and Red, they’ve created rich middle tones, and with Green Gold or Blue added, served very well as colors for the reflections.

     I liked the idea of having one opaque and one transparent color of the same color family on the palette. It provided so much more flexibility and variety.