Geranium Color Study

As I was doing this sketch, I was thinking that color studies can be helpful in understanding what you're studying by coming at the subject from a slightly different angle than the drawn sketch. You see details that drawing is not optimized to help you see. This is probably a painfully obvious observation, but sometimes painfully obvious things hit home at unique times.

I think this observation is probably interdisciplinary, but hit me specifically about painting as that's where I generally tend to spend my mental effort. I think that this really boils down to "the more different ways that you can pay attention to a thing, the more subtle and different aspects of the thing you learn about". Different attentions reward the attendee in different ways. For instance, I really liked the way that using different greens helped me explore the form of the geranium leaves. Especially the leaf on the right. I also like the way the cooler, darker red/purples in the shadows of the flower help define the brighter, warmer reds of the individual petals. The color temperature of things and how it can be used to turn form isn't something that is of particular use when drawing in monochrome.

-ZR