Painting Fun!

 Do you have a certain color that you love to use all the time? I really love Payne's Grey, although the name doesn't really fit in my estimation. Payne's Grey is a cool, dark, almost black shade of blue. In all my fruit paintings with a dark background, I've used this color and it seems to make things "pop" in the foreground.

 Every time I see round paper mache boxes I think of snowmen and how cute they would look painted on these little treasure "keeps". So I started with Payne's Grey for the base coat of the lids and Red Violet for the base coat of the rest of the boxes and the hats on the snowmen. I then used a light shade of red mixed with the red violet and then the red alone and then red mixed with pumpkin orange and then a soft touch of the orange for highlights. I used the same technique for the green sweater, but with shades of greens and yellow for the highlights.

I tried to keep the design loose and as free as I know how....lol, so that the under colors show through. I didn't care whether the different elements in the design covered all the background color as I'm trying to learn to let each shape speak for itself by layering rather than the usual shading. I also wanted a  It was a fun exercise, and now I want to do a framed wall hanging to match. I'm not sure if the colors I used are in the 2010 trend palette or not, but I was looking for something a bit lighter and brighter than the usual "prim" look tends to be. Inspiration was also found the purple and orange combo you sometimes see in Autumn fabrics and such.
So what are your favorite colors to use in your art, and how do you like to use them?