Local Color Palettes
...Especially in Winter
Growing up in the Midwest, my least favorite season was Winter, in part due to the muted, monochromatic color palette of the landscape this time of year. Everywhere I looked I saw brown and gray: brown leafless trees, brown & tan grass, gray skies, and no-longer-white-but-now-gray snow. I found these scenes stark and somber though I do appreciate that brown-and-gray Winter landscapes can have a quiet beauty to them.
One of the many reasons I love living in Tucson is that year-round, including Winter, the predominant color palette here is green and blue! We have lots of green cacti, agaves, trees that don’t lose their leaves, and even trees that do lose their leaves but have green bark and branches like Palo Verdes…so when I look out at our landscape in Winter I see all that green plus our beautiful blue skies.
Right now we also have splashes of other colors in the landscape, most notably yellow. Here are two recent Perpetual Journal pages of mine featuring yellow.
For this year’s Nov. 19-25 Perpetual Journal page I painted our Turpentine Bush which has been blooming with super-bright yellow flowers for many weeks now. The plant is named for its distinctive aroma and for some reason our Turpentine Bush seems to attract Bobcats. We’ve seen many Bobcats rubbing themselves up against the plant (even though it’s toxic to cats). 🤔 In my 2022 art for the same week I also featured yellow, painting the yellow Barrel Cacti fruits we see every year.
For this year’s Nov. 26 - Dec. 2 Perpetual Journal entry I painted a branch of one of our Mesquite trees with its Fall foliage colors including more yellow.
For my latest Perpetual Journal entry, I painted the very vibrant colors of a sunset we enjoyed last week.
Yes, our sunsets are that colorful and yes, they are more vibrant here in the desert compared to many other locations, thanks to our dry, clear air. In a nutshell, moisture and pollution particles in the air can block a lot of the sunlight, dulling and diluting sunset colors.
I hope you’re finding beauty and color in your landscape at this time of year!
Interesting note about the sunset colours in different environments.