My palette was a bit messier than this after I finished some tinting exercises. Actually, not exercises really, just answering my own questions about how certain earthtones looked as they were mixed with more and more white. But painting little squares takes very little paint which left a lot untouched. Even though I paid for my paints from the money I earn at cons, my "fun money" if you will, I hate to waste paint.
So I decided to try a painting or two using along with permanent white. I think I add some Cadmium Red to the second image but other than that it was all from leftover paint. The "downside" of this is that much of the painting is more like working with watercolor because there's no really juicy paint to dip the brush into. But it still can get thick enough to be opaque. My first painting was of a landscape just outside Sedona, AZ. That's Bell Rock on the left. I have one work in progress shot.
I laid in the basic colors quickly. I should have continued to work the whole painting, but instead I started with the foreground and cliffs on the right. I increased contrast and added details. Fell into some of my overworking habits on the cliffs and they began to look like a row of cylinders instead of a flat cliff face. Then life intervened and the painting sat on my easel where I saw it everyday. I kept thinking about what I needed to do: try to get the cliffs to look flat and recapture some of the glow of the light on its face that I had earlier then add more contrast to Bell Rock. But I wasn't looking forward to it.
Finally, I looked at it and remembered the wonderful question my wife had asked months before, "Isn't it supposed to be fun?" I decided to just take the tape off and call it done. I'm constantly berating myself for overworking the paint and realized that Bell Rock looked fine as a loose representation that looked fine. I will definitely be returning to the red rocks. We used to vacation there all the time and I want to be ready to really paint them pleine air.
The process of creating the painting below was the opposite experience. I think it came out great. I can tell because I look at it and can't believe I did it. Done all in one day, I loosely blocked in the major colors, concentrating on placing the darks. It might have gone even more quickly if I wasn't bingeing a rewatch of Ted Lasso. It's from a photo from the Paris catacombs but I pushed more color into it. I didn't worry about copying the photo exactly. I was more interested in controlling the focus to concentrate on the front skulls.
That catches me up to where I am now with a painting started on my easel from this morning. I stopped after laying in the basic colors because the paper buckled and I needed it to dry more. And then democracy was threatened by insurrectionists storming the Capitol building in Washington DC and I felt the need to watch.
Stay Safe! -- Tad
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