Limited Palette

Biggest debate of the week was which two tubes or pans or pastel sticks to select for this weeks club topic. Any subject, any medium but only 2 tubes or pans etc. A member sugested that it was easier to say two colours, but as organisers we were afraid that it would be interpreted as any number of variations of the two chosen colours. We wanted to really limit the options so that members were pushed into experimenting with the options available from their two chosen tubes or pans (with two exceptions all chose to paint with watercolours, the remaining two chose black and white inks)
I selected Cobalt Blue and Indian Yellow. This would give me a blue for the florals, yellow for the stamens and a mixture of the two for my greens.
I did a loose sketch before the session, and had little difficulty with all the basic elements, but the shadow areas did give me some trouble as I could only produce greenish colours for this. When I viewed the finished painting, I was aware that it seemed very cold, but could not get around this as I had no access to any warmer colours. Maybe I should have chosen a warmer blue to begin with!

When I arrived home, I used Moonglow and Ultramarine Pink to create a shadow colour and overpainted some of the floral shadow areas. I also used th Cobalt Blue and the background mixtue of the Cobalt and Indian yellow to reduce the curled petal of the r.h. flower that seemed to have taken on the appearance of a blue mushroom. Finally, I added more Indian Yellow to the centres of the flowers to soften the overall impression of blue flowers. Not really sure if the additions work, and I apologise for the lack of consistency in the photos, but they were both taken at the same time of day at the same table in the studio, just on consecutive days, and the amount of sunshine has been vey consistent. Not at all sure why the camera has pruduced such different results. Any ideas, anyone?

Fabriano Artistico Extra White 300gms