A color palette of false Solomon’s seal provides a look at specific colors found on the plant. To the right, a sketch illustrates the plant’s design.
False Solomon’s seal is a plant that I stumble upon every so often in woodlands. I recently found a grouping of them with their naturally leaning stems standing just over two feet tall. The stems were lined with large, ovate leaves arranged into an alternating pattern. At the very end of each stem were berries. The red coloring of the berries stood out among the yellowing greens that are increasingly prevalent at this time of year. Instead of doing a plein air painting, I made a quick sketch of one of the plants and recorded its color palette. I picked six colors, three on the berries and three on the leaves, to isolate and document with watercolors.
Circles of color represent the colors found on the false Solomon’s seal. The swatches to the right of the circles are tests I did to see how happy I was with the mixed colors. The swatch all the way to the right of the tests is the color that appears in the circle. If the color in the circle looks a little bit different, this is most likely due to the amount of water that ended up in the paint. A paler color is usually the result of paint diluted with more water.
The false Solomon’s seal was located in its preferred dappled lighting, which, in turn, caused the colors of the plant to frequently change by increasing either their vibrancy or dullness. A red berry looked very different depending on what the lighting situation was. I worked around this by picking colors in lighting that the plant appeared in the most: not too sunny and not too shady.
I mixed only two colors, red and orange, in a particular ratio to achieve the bright red of the shiny berries, which is the first color on the palette. The berries’ shadows were more brownish. When I mixed this color, it turned out just how I wanted on the first try. Note the single color swatch next to the circle. Two of the berries on the plant were an interesting greenish beige color with teeny, tiny red dots. This beige color is the third recorded color.
The smooth alternating leaves were cool green. As evident by the number of swatches, it took a couple of tries to mix this color into how it appeared. A slightly darker green color defined the shadows of the leaves’ straightly grooved veining. The edges of the leaves were lined with a bright yellow that was softly distributed. This yellowing effect did not venture too far inward on the leaves to take over the greens.
Documenting the color palette of the false Solomon’s seal was a fun and interesting way to record my observations without making a complete painting. Palettes have the ability to magnify colors that might be subtle or overshadowed by something else. I think of palettes as documentation of moments or colors in time and in light, serving as artful souvenirs.
My supplies included Canson XL Watercolor paper (that I cut into smaller pieces), a Derwent Graphic 4H Pencil, and Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolours.