Camaïeu Bleu

The first time I became aware of the painting style called camaïeu bleu was when I found a painting in the Marché aux Puces in Paris. I fell in love with the process of treating a color in a monochromatic way. I still have that Paris painting and years later I found a painting by French artist Jean-Baptiste Pillement, a painter famous for painting in this process. . . I became inspired by the painting. When I started painting I was painting in multicolors and loved it, but recently I wanted to see how paintings would look transposed into camaïeu blu I have attempted to play around with this style . Shown in images below. are some of my efforts. The reason I like this style is that it corrosponds to my passion I shared with you in A Passion for Blue and White. This type of painting goes with so many other colors and fits in any style of decoration.

Pillement, Jean Baptiste (1728-1808)
oil on canvas. This is close up of my painting all in shades and tints of blue. Below are three of my first attempts in the technique. This inspired me.
I have just made them into note cards, and prints available on my website https://www.carolyneroehmshop.com

A mood board (above) for my Blue & White book from all the things I loved in blue and white. The icebergs are totally in Camaïeu Bleu. The palette above is the type of spectrum reflective of camaïeu bleu, narrow, but different hues, shades and tints.In this painting above, by Henri Matisse,the artist used greener shades of blue plus he also added color in the terra cotta pots and fruit. That’s the first time I noticed you can add different colors into this style so there 2 ways of practicing Camaïeu Bleu: using all blue fundamentals, or all blue with accent colors.

Besides doing the paintings in Camaïeu Bleu style – I am also working on an embroidery project (examples above) That are also use the idea of multiple blues. ( This is another story -more on that later)

This is Blue Butterfly

Camaïeu Bleu, with the red accent on the face was used in the bird painting pictured above.

These are the new notecards of the paintings( above)

As you can see, my notecards double nicely as gift tags. By the way for those of you on Instagram, I wanted to thank you for all of the great ideas you gave me on the red tulip! You really inspired me. I am taking the red tulip into fabric and wrapping paper. But more about that later!