Under a clear blue sky, violet peaks peer out behind alpine trees with wizened limbs. A mountain scene provides the perfect backdrop for the cascade of color that is the alpine meadow in bloom. Lucky hikers trek through this rainbow garland among butterflies and bees. Artists will delight in painting this stunning scenery with Daniel Smith’s new Alpine Wildflowers Triad.
A perfectly tuned mixing palette allows you to paint the layers of color that compose a mountain landscape. This trio of watercolor focuses on highly saturated hues and clean mixes, giving the artist maximum color strength and the ability to create intermediate colors with ease. Each watercolor is made of a single pigment so mixtures remain true. Start with a primary palette of Manganese Blue Hue, Hansa Yellow Deep and Perylene Red as the basis for a brilliant landscape.
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Manganese Blue Hue embodies the crisp, cool air in the high elevations of a mountain journey. This watercolor is light and bright, a simple shade that becomes complex in mixtures. Use this granulating pigment to create a stunning sky by wetting the page and applying a wash into this wet area. Manganese Blue Hue moves into the wet areas, creating a natural looking sky with areas of thin white clouds. As your primary blue, this shade becomes indispensable for the violets and greens in your painting.
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Hansa Yellow Deep is a bold and rich yellow. It is the radiant color of sunflower petals or the more ubiquitous “school bus yellow.” Mixed with Manganese Blue Hue the resulting greens are seemingly infinite—start with a golden spring green and add more blue to achieve a lively sap green. Even more blue leads to evergreen and olive tones. Dot your alpine landscape with bursts of yellow flowers or add a summer sun for a glorious day.
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Perylene Red is a strong mid-range shade to round out this mixing triad. Mix with Manganese Blue Hue to make a lovely granulating lavender for distant mountains and dark shadows. Mix with Hansa Yellow Deep for fiery orange shades. At full strength, Perylene Red makes brilliant crimson petals in the foreground of your painting. Dilute and diffuse this showy color in wet-into-wet applications for subtle flowers in the background.
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