Welcome to a little secret project I started, well the first day I picked up a paint brush. Watercolour and gouache colour study paintings. These colour studies are an ongoing project. I have done hundreds Of these little works on paper over the years on scraps of paper here and there and recently in the precious pages of multiple sketchbooks. Some a big, some small,  some messy some structured. Some layer upon layer covering mistakes and going until I like the work again. Really there is no rhyme or reason to them often it is the urge to paint and not knowing what to paint. I splash paint around and I just let it develop. I test out colour combinations, and brush strokes, I try play with the amount of water in the gouache and watch the watercolours blend and bleed. I paint messy florals and then put them away, and come back in with details and new ideas. It is colour play. 

I used to hide these away and just let them pile up and fill sketchbooks. I used them to prompt bigger ideas and test colour combinations, to use left over paints on a palette as I clean them up. I just never thought they were good enough to share and make into anything bigger. I minimised their value to my progress and as building blocks of my style.  

With my new fancy scanner being able to scan at a very high quality and consistently good colour match it might be time to dig back through the archive. If I like them they will end up on Society 6 and RedBubble. If I like them other people might like them too. 

Colour Study Paintings by LoveMish