Painting “Winkle & Tonk” was an exercise in restraint. I’ve often seen selective colour paintings or photographs – that is, when most of the painting is in a neutral colour and only portions of the painting are coloured – and resolved to one day give it a go. I’m not sure if I forgot or was doing an Orwellian double-think trick, but I almost painted Winkle purple before I remembering.

Luckily, I managed to reign in my colourful ambitions and settled on a more subtle use of purple to highlight his baubles and mittens and a complimentary shade of yellow to highlight Tonk’s horns and striped socks.

The background colour of the middle canvas was supposed to be a neutral colour as well but came out way more yellow than I was expecting. This gave me the idea to make the middle canvas colourful. If you look closely at the “gems” in the centre, you’ll see both Winkle and Tonk’s own personal shades of purple and yellow represented.

Winkle & Tonk are currently keeping my Etsy shop company, whilst they await their friends in-the-making to arrive.