I usually keep to a very limited color palette: dark brown and either brass/gold or silver. I have thought to try other colors but unless they are accents, they tend to overwhelm the work.
I did use white to explore the many contrasts integral to these pieces but unless the white was attached to some natural element, like a bone or shell, the white breaks the illusion of these works having been created a long time ago.
Still, I keep coming back to new colors and have lately been curious about expanding the color palette to black. It not only gives me a new opportunity to explore the aesthetic I have been creating but keeps the work fresh as well.
Black would not be nearly as disruptive as white and my hunch is that the black would be much more in keeping with the history I am trying to create in my Foundlings. The above piece is in progress. The raw or faded wood has not been stained and I am only now trying to “engineer” how all of the pieces will fit (and stay) together,... and that takes time.
It is my hope that the wood, once it is stained my usual dark mahogany, would be evocative of my “studies in brown” while opening a whole new world of black. In this work I will have brass/gold but will have an ostrich egg as it’s focal point. It should be very striking.