Cloud light study
This was a more recent effort (February). It is definitely a study, not a finished painting. Though I don't consider it entirely successful, it did teach me some useful things.
I've been trying to solve a problem with a previous unfinished painting involving sunset clouds over an ocean. I've also been mulling around the muted yet beautiful color rendering that was prevalent in the 1910s or so (arts and crafts/ art nouveau), how it conveys the sort of color you see at dusk when the sun is still up but most of the scene is no longer directly lit. How do you create those muted colors, vs. the objects in full sun? Well, with complementary color mixing, in theory. But putting it into practice is something I need to work on more.
I've also wanted to experiment more in painting with a watercolor style using fluid acrylics, which have better archival longevity than watercolor. Since the fluid acrylics dry waterproof, you can't lift or lighten a dry layer, which has advantages (you won't accidentally smudge something by washing over it) and disadvantages (you can't wipe off paint later to lighten an area or fix a mistake). As it turns out, the fluid acrylics dry about as slowly as watercolor when used this way, but I found it harder to get really pale, dilute washes.
So one night I experimented with these mullings. I don't have many fluid acrylics, so I had a modern palette that didn't really match up with the 1910s color concept: quinacridone magenta, phthalo blue, diarylide yellow; also used a smidge of white, turquois phthalo, jenkins green. As I found, though, you can still tone it down with complementary mixes (orange + blue, etc.).
I did this study improvisationally, not planning exactly how the light would work; thus it's not entirely consistent. I was mainly exploring how to mix the colors. The basic idea is that the light is coming from the horizon, but out of the frame of the picture, while the foreground is out of the light. The overall effect doesn't satisfy me... the water got too flat and murky, for one thing; it actually looks brighter here in the scan than in the original. But in places there were some nice accidental bleeds that made pretty color minglings (though some just got murky), and some good granulation effects, just like with watercolor.
I seem to be happiest in the middle of a painting, the sweet spot, after the uncertain beginning; then it so often gets overworked or the good bits overridden. Still, there were important inklings for me here, such as how to transition from the purples to the oranges (a warm violet, overlaid on the yellow-orange, creates a warm brown)... I really liked that dusky violet. Hopefully I can apply this exercise to the stalled painting, which has been bugging me for a long time.
I've been trying to solve a problem with a previous unfinished painting involving sunset clouds over an ocean. I've also been mulling around the muted yet beautiful color rendering that was prevalent in the 1910s or so (arts and crafts/ art nouveau), how it conveys the sort of color you see at dusk when the sun is still up but most of the scene is no longer directly lit. How do you create those muted colors, vs. the objects in full sun? Well, with complementary color mixing, in theory. But putting it into practice is something I need to work on more.
I've also wanted to experiment more in painting with a watercolor style using fluid acrylics, which have better archival longevity than watercolor. Since the fluid acrylics dry waterproof, you can't lift or lighten a dry layer, which has advantages (you won't accidentally smudge something by washing over it) and disadvantages (you can't wipe off paint later to lighten an area or fix a mistake). As it turns out, the fluid acrylics dry about as slowly as watercolor when used this way, but I found it harder to get really pale, dilute washes.
So one night I experimented with these mullings. I don't have many fluid acrylics, so I had a modern palette that didn't really match up with the 1910s color concept: quinacridone magenta, phthalo blue, diarylide yellow; also used a smidge of white, turquois phthalo, jenkins green. As I found, though, you can still tone it down with complementary mixes (orange + blue, etc.).
I did this study improvisationally, not planning exactly how the light would work; thus it's not entirely consistent. I was mainly exploring how to mix the colors. The basic idea is that the light is coming from the horizon, but out of the frame of the picture, while the foreground is out of the light. The overall effect doesn't satisfy me... the water got too flat and murky, for one thing; it actually looks brighter here in the scan than in the original. But in places there were some nice accidental bleeds that made pretty color minglings (though some just got murky), and some good granulation effects, just like with watercolor.
I seem to be happiest in the middle of a painting, the sweet spot, after the uncertain beginning; then it so often gets overworked or the good bits overridden. Still, there were important inklings for me here, such as how to transition from the purples to the oranges (a warm violet, overlaid on the yellow-orange, creates a warm brown)... I really liked that dusky violet. Hopefully I can apply this exercise to the stalled painting, which has been bugging me for a long time.