What color is white?

My studio hoe-out is coming along nicely. Most of the boxes have been gone through and I've given away and thrown away a lot of things I don't need anymore. I've been looking at some of my projects and came across a white rose painted in watercolor. I thought you might enjoy contemplating the matter of how to paint a white object. Here is my rose.


There is no question that the flower is white. But without the use of other colors to create shadows, depth, and highlight, the painting would be flat and uninteresting. The purples and blues in the background dictated that the detail colors in the rose needed to be purples and blues. You will notice a few places on the outer petals where the sunlight is glinting with a yellow cast.

Here is another white object painted in Genesis Heat-set oils. This is the County courthouse tower during a fireworks display. In this case, the shadows are a the grey-blue-black of the night sky. The tints are the reflections of the colors of the fireworks.

So, what color is white? Any color you want or need it to be. The one thing that is certain is that white is colorful.