I have been gone and traveling a lot,  but now that I am back, lets talk about red-violet.

Whenever I get to cleaning my easel or the floor of my studio, this color comes up the most. 

I guess I like it.

Red-violet is a little-recognized workhorse. Reds and oranges tend to be the go-to hues for portraits, but I often tell my students to rotate away from all the oranges and pinks and sepia tones in a portrait to find and hone in on red-violet variations.   

Red violet is like a soothing, yet tart, cherry candy from childhood. And I saw it everywhere in Sedona. 

Besides being a lovely color, is it a nice foil to yellow-green, which it sits across from it on a 12-color color wheel. And I always think a portrait is never complete without a few green accents. No matter what color tones I am dealing with, I always see a greenish, almost olive cast to skin tones. Old masters knew this well. In order for those reds, pinks and warm tones to pop? Green. And red-violet is there to help energize the entire image.

And that is what I was seeing in those Sedona rocks. Reds and oranges, sure. But man, the red-violets! The cool, blue-violets in the shadows! The rocks are mesmerizing, not the least of which because the shadows are not lifeless. Not black, not “dead” like you would see in those photos after coming back from a trip like this and wondering why the photos just don’t capture the landscape. Alive with color.

Here are a few photos from such an amazing week. 

So where to next? Be sure to follow along and find out.  

Next week, true Violet.