Confusion Reigns

Haven't been able to get out this week, that is until today. I'm posting this largely as a way of venting my frustration with the day's effort. Went up the coast to my usual stretch of cliff and set up. The cloud cover was already in and I decided on an approach that would push the colour and attempt to make the foreground jump with colour as a means of creating recession. You can probably guess that the lack of painting time this week has meant an excess of thinking time and that I've built up a little checklist of the things I intended to achieve on this, my next outing. I'm afraid that it turned out formulaic but not just one formula in play. The lack of light had me struggling to give appropriate form to the cliffs and I got hung up on introducing each and every colour that I convinced myself I could see, then decided to tone some of them down. Just goes to show that the thinking and planning is best done with the subject in front of you and being able to make choices in light of the prevailing conditions.

Desperate to get a positive out of proceedings, I lighted on the fact that I was able to produce a real range of colour from my limited palette of Indanthrone Blue, Naples Yellow, Venetian Red and Titanium White. I'll keep plugging with it for a while longer.

Souter Cove - Oil sketch on canvas board 12" x 10"

Pushing Chroma with limited palette

This week has been given over to reflection on my attempts to use and extremely limited palette as outlined in previous posts. Two comments by other artists got me thinking as to how I might improve my technique. They related to recession and intensity of chroma. This piece was done as a study to attempt to address those issues.

I decided to continue working with a limited palette and 'mud', but changed the palette colours. For this painting the palette was made up of Indanthrone Blue, Naples Yellow and Venetian Red with Titanium White. I selected these colours as they have greater chroma potential than the previous choice. My thinking as I look at this piece is that I have made a little progress. There is greater recession in this picture than in the last couple and there is greater evidence of chroma in the foreground. I'm still unsure about the production of colour for foreground highlight as pure colour often does not appear to produce the necessary value shift without addition of white. It seems to me that the answer to this might lie in adjusting the palette selection till there is a balance between choice for colour intensity and value. Colour choice where hues are adjacent to one another is another area for experimentation.

Subject is a favourite spot in the West of Ireland at the end of the Dingle peninsula. The source is a holiday photograph of mine.



Coumeenoole - Oil on canvas board 12" x 10"

Nose's Point

Managed to get out today, once again down the coast near home. One day I'm determined to do it justice. Today's effort was a continuation of the limited palette approach with the addition of the previous day's mud. I found it testing to get the appropriate variety of colour for the piece but felt that the effort was more than helpful in developing my appreciation of colour mixing. I envisage being able to rid my box of a number of tubes as I gain more experience in the use of limited palettes and am looking forward to experimenting with further combinations.

Nose's Point - Oil on canvas board 12" x 10"

Limited Palette

As promised last week I had decided that I needed to give some thought to a number of issues relating to my plein air practice. Preparing properly ensuring that I had enough paint mixed needed to be addressed as well as the sequence of applying paint. Having made up my mind to do it I selected a demonstration piece from a Kevin MacPherson book as the vehicle to pull some of these ideas together.

The approach adopted required a number of things: limited palette, definite sequence of activity and gradual refinement.

The palette advised consisted of Chromatic Black, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre and Titanium White. Prior to starting I prepared my palette by creating a whole series of secondaries and adding varying amounts of white to them so that I produced the best greens, oranges and purples that were possible. Having laid these out it became easier to see where the painting might go. After toning the canvas and sketching the outline I blocked in the shadows and put in the darkest dark and lightest light. These were the values against which all other tones would be judged. After that it was a case of putting in the main colour notes. Then, working all over the canvas, the colours and shapes were refined and adjusted.

Whilst not totally successful in terms if the finished piece I found this to be a real learning experience that will inform my future practice. Following the whole sequence made it easier to make judgements during painting, in particular having created the palette of colours in sufficient quantities prior to starting. My next project will involve using the 'mud' left on the palette to underpin the creation of the palette that I use.

MacPherson Demonstration - Oil on canvas board 12" x 10"