My favourite colour is turquoise, which has been so long before I started my painting career. Whilst I do not have this in my signature edition set of Schmincke watercolours, I will mix my own using Helio Cerulean and May Green from my half pans. As I mostly work wet into wet, I will let the two colours merge quite naturally on the paper to create my turquoise hue. When working on my inky paintings, I can use the turquoise from the Daler Rowney FW Acrylic Ink range which are extremely vibrant – I just adore bright colours and I think you will find this evident in most of my work be it animals, buildings, flowers, and other genres.
I have always been drawn to water and love the bluey/greens of the ocean and so perhaps think this is why I am so fond of this colour. I have many items of clothing in turquoise too plus lots of pieces of silver jewellery with this gemstone. It is such a clean, fresh colour – it never fails to make me happy. I am a Cancerian, so as a water sign, maybe this is all relative.
We know blue and green are receding colours, however, I don’t use my turquoise this way, I think it is too nice to sit back so I will always use it to full advantage. For example, if I do opt to use it as a background colour – it is more to brighten up the whole painting. Look at these two paintings where I have included this, the cockerel looks so vibrant here because the blue tones in the turquoise are complementary to the orangey feathers and the green tones complement the red in his wonderful wattle and comb. The Pheasant is surrounded by this beautiful hue but here I feel it really helps the subject stand out and the salt sprinkled into this for textural effect and additional interest, worked particularly well in this pigment.
I will never tire of this gorgeous colour as when I look back at over 25 years’ worth of paintings, I can see my colour choices have hardly changed at all, but more the style in which I work has most certainly become more loose & lively.
About Jo Allsopp
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