Purple Mat Gallery
—Little but Lovely
I always enjoy seeing Purple Mat blooming here in Tucson. The plant is small and low to the ground, but its 1/2” flowers are an eye-catching bright purple! Here’s my Perpetual Journal art of Purple Mat in bloom plus Coulter Hibiscus which graced us with more flowers this year than it did in 2023.
Since this isn’t the first time I’ve illustrated Purple Mat, I thought I’d share some of my “vintage” Purple Mat art, that I created in a colored pencil class I took in 2016.
In this class we experimented with drawing on different types of papers and surfaces. I chose Purple Mat for one of my subjects and illustrated it on 3 different types of papers/surfaces.
Rising Stonehenge Paper
For this illustration of a Purple Mat flower I used a creamy ivory color of Rising Stonehenge paper—a printmaking paper popular with colored pencil artists.
One of the characteristics of colored pencil that I love is that you can see all the little specks of colored pencil on the paper (especially if you don’t press down too hard with the colored pencils), resulting in a speckly effect! On the flip side, one of the characteristics of watercolor that I love is that the colors can look very smooth and even, as you see in my Perpetual Journal art above.
Black Paper
In my class we also experimented with using colored pencils on black paper.
I was pleasantly surprised that colored pencils showed up at all on black paper, but to be honest……meh……this didn’t really do too much for me (to each their own!).
Vellum
I was happier with my results using colored pencil on vellum, especially because the colors were brighter than on black paper—better capturing the vibrant lavender color of these little flowers.
Because vellum is semi-transparent, you can apply colored pencil to both sides of the vellum, and you can also overlay pieces of vellum on top of each other to create a more 3D effect.
These experiments were fun, but my current favorite combination is pen and watercolor on watercolor paper (as you see in my Perpetual Journal art and almost all the art I post here on my blog)—though I do add colored pencil, graphite, and gouache to my watercolor art, sparingly and occasionally. It’s all good. 😊
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