These are the colors that I have used so far for the palm leaves : Schminke’s phthalo blue, indian yellow, red madder dark, payne’s grey and Lukas burnt sienna. The centres of the leaves are complicated and I have painted them separately from the leaflets by softening the edges and letting the layers dry in between. Here is centre of the main frontal leaf, in which I wet the area first and dropped in Indian Yellow, so that I donot lose the lighter, pure value there. The four leaflets towards the right reflect the sky and are bluish, dropped in phthalo blue after wetting them.
Here is the first layer for the entire leaf. The tips are yellowed and some of them burnt. Dropped in the yellow and then burnt sienna at the extreme end.
I have not painted the leaves in the order shown here but for clarity’s sake, I have put all the first layers in this post. This lower leaf is in shade and I mixed a bit of payne’s grey to the blue to dull it down a bit.
The left portion of the leaf is not yet separated into leaflets. I wet the entire area and dropped in the different shades of green mixed from the yellow and blue, as it was drying, I lifted out some highlight lines with a stiff brush and stroked in some directional lines with stronger colors. I let it dry completely and dropped in the violet mixed from red madder dark and the green in the wet centre area. The forward facing leaves have v-shaped highlights at places where they are facing downwards. For the upward leaves, I dampened the area and stroked in payne’s grey mixed with a little blue taking care to leave the whites of the highlights.
Below is the upper left leaf and there is more of violet here. Used the same technique and colors as for the others.
Watercolor Journal 