Cote Sud Color

For years and years I collected Côté Sud magazines. Oh why didn't I bring my stacks with me to Paris? ;(

It was all round thrilling to attend their Salon Côté Sud Vivre in Aix and as presse no less. It's still going on today so you can run there VITE!

The magazine has always been an amazing source of inspiration. And the Salon didn't disappoint.

COLOR COLOR COLOR of such intensity. The most beautiful combinations. These are from Les Toiles du Soleil. That's my fan btw. They have a divine shop on west 19th street in New York. I am marching over to their Paris shop toute a suite to get me some more COLOR! I'm in love...

La Table de Nana asked me if people were wearing linens and balloon trousers. How did you know? And why didn't you tell me ahead so I could blend in...

Jeanette, Mistress of Longears asked me what paints I travel with.

I take my basic Kremer paintbox (although I moved the pans (I only use pans but refill with Winsor and Newton tubes when traveling) into my mom's old paintbox. I do use Winsor and Newton Brt Sienna, Fr Ultramarine, Cerulean, Permanent Rose for their nice washy quality. I take only a small sketchbook 6" x 8" to do color studies and thumbnails in. Plus a bunch of old paint brushes on their last legs but I love Da Vinci Junior synthetics series 303. I use real artist grade colors. Would you buy cheap hamburger for your family? Never! So please think the same way about your watercolor paints.

Honestly PBers...tsk tsk

The natural colors of Provence are just stunning bien sur - small olive trees - I wanted to take one of these home...

The regional Provencal foods at the Salon were simply out of this world and not pricy. I couldn't find anything comparable near where I was staying. Too many touristy joints for the masses so I saved myself for the salon and lived on apricots and almonds...

My raspberry tarte and lemonade. but I also had tartines of tapenade, anchoaide, fig confit...miam miam

I could have really used one of these hats. Next time!

I did buy peach soaps on a rope from Cote Bastide. YUM

There were loads of soapy- spa items made from regional olive oils etc.





Of course the Rose was flowing!!



And PLENTY of ice cream/glace for tired, hot ole moi. Nothing like an ice cream to perk you up instantly is there? Do take a look at Cote Sud magazine for instant perks and mountains of inspiration!

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Color Swatches

I have a bag full of color test sheets I can't throw out.
One of the 1st watercolor lessons you learn is to test out your colors on a paper scrap before putting brush to expen$ive watercolor paper.

I get attached to the test color scraps. Sometimes they're better than the so-called 'work of art'. After watercolor class I'd go round picking up the test scraps off the floor. The colors were lush, splashed on freely. Some of my own color test scraps are far superior to anything else IMO. 

  People tear their hair out daily trying to get their walls to look like some swatch of paper with a divine color on it. They've fallen in love with that color and will settle for nothing else = it's madness. Has this happened to you?  

In many PB posts I'll mix up and match paint colors to whatever I'm writing on about, whether it be macarons, chocolate, swimming pools, cherries, toy birds, ice cream, orange, red, black, pink.  

Long ago I took a color mixing class at Parsons. We could only use 3 primaries - RED + YELLOW + BLUE. We mixed colors until we were blue in the face for 6 weeks.

 

Mixing GREENS is always difficult.

That's the thing about color. It's so easy to fall in love with color. I thought I was mad for RED. All those ridiculous personality tests where they ask you your favorite color, I always put RED. But now I realize it's BLUE I can't stop using all over the place.

I took Dr. Lusher's color test for this post.
It told me:
Hungers for intensity in life and welcomes opportunity to take on challanges.

I love color mixing and matching.

It's one of those nice meditative, mindless activities you can do endlessly, yet at the same time is quite challenging. It's not as easy to match a color as you'd imagine.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad