Virgin Island colors

There is nothing like the tropics for intense colors; Bright turquoise seas and vibrant green coasts; Brilliantly colored flowers and birds.  The natural tropical colors effect everything and everyone.  Houses are painted turquoise, pink, red and bright green.  People wear bright floral shirts and dresses.

I took my smallest travel kit with me on my recent sailing trip in the Virgin Islands.  It includes a Van Gogh water color pocket box and a small Mole skin watercolor notebook.  The kit's palette includes cold and warm blues, reds and yellows; along with yellow ochre and burnt sienna.  These are usually perfect for everything I paint, but in the tropics I wished I had also taken some other colors like, Quinacridone gold and Opera pink.

Below is a sketch I did from the balcony of our hotel in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas USVI while waiting for breakfast.  The blue sky mirrored the blue of the bay.  Green palms, banana and mango trees reached up through gaps between buildings.  The rising sun reflected off the red roofs throughout the town.  Mixing Permanent Yellow and Madder Lake Deep provided the various shades of yellow, orange and red I was seeing.

For the rest of the trip we stayed aboard our sailboat, traveling from one island to another.  We did spend three days at Cane Garden Bay, Tortola BVI.  While there I was able to do another sketch from the boat.  The turquoise of the water was done by layering Cerulean blue on top of Azo yellow.