Sunny colours, a repost from 2023

Miriam Bos uses these colours in her upcoming Colori Flori Summit lesson

The Colori Flori Summit 2026 kicked off on Monday with fourteen artists teaching lessons inspired by florals and botanicals. All lessons are prerecorded, edited and packaged up, to be shared daily from 18-31 May. Each lesson incorporates a limited colour palette chosen from the #coloricombo archive - can you believe that I’ve been sharing these weekly prompts since the start of 2022?

On Tuesday 26 May Miriam Bos will present Strokes of Sunflower using the palette below. Miriam chose this palette from Week 8 of 2023 which was way before I moved to Substack so I am sharing it again today.

“Stroke of Sunflower” studies, pencil and gouache in sketchbook, Miriam Bos, 2026

Each lesson in the summit is shared with a link to the original Coloricombo prompt where you can revisit the source of the colour palette, normally chosen from an artwork by an artist from the past. You can read Miriam’s post about the lesson here.

PS Join us, it’s not too late to sign up to the Colori Flori Summit that runs until 31 May.

All the prerecorded lessons come with lifetime access so you can watch everything at a pace that suits you, do the projects in your own time and revisit lessons again at a later date. Find out more here.

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Originally posted on 20 February, 2023

We were out for a long walk today, a crisp sunny blue sky day. Spring is definitely in the air. Snowdrops and daffodils could be seen along the route we walked, signalling the new season to come. I grew up in South Africa and always thought that daffodils were exotic flowers, very rarely seen in sub-tropical gardens. Here in England, they grow next to the road.

The painting I’ve chosen for this week’s #coloricombo is from the renowned British painter Winfred Nicholson.

Rosa Winifred Roberts (1893-1981) was born in Oxford, England to a wealthy, political family. She spent her youth painting as she lived between countryside properties in Cumberland and Yorkshire, as well as London. She studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London, finishing there after World War One.

After marrying her painter husband, Ben Nicholson, in 1920, they travelled together through Europe, capturing local views from residences in France and Italy.

They had three children: Jake, Kate and Andrew who often feature in her paintings. There were tensions in the marriage and the couple eventually split, with Ben Nicholson going on to marry the sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

Despite being overshadowed by her husband during her lifetime, Winifred Nicholson is recognised as a major figure in British modernism. Her work is highly sought after and can be found in many collections across the world.

Her landscapes and still life paintings were characterised by soft colours and delicate brushwork, often depicting the landscapes and seascapes of Cornwall where she visited frequently.

One of her favourite compositions was to combine domestic objects together with a landscape, often placing flower arrangements on a windowsill in front of a the landscape beyond.

You can learn more about Nicolson here and here.

“Kate’s Flowers”, Oil on plywood, Winifred Nicolson, 1936

Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Primrose, Sunshine, Pumpkin, Baby Blue and Mouse Grey.

Tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod when posting on Instagram and you are welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

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