October Light

The first of a series of paintings which try and convey winter, using colours more suitable for warmer paintings. These colours are the same as the last few paintings, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Yellow and Prussian Blue. In fact this might be the only painting of this series. The yellow is so intense and its tinting power so great, the overall look is bright and warm. Because I use so few colours each individual one is involved in almost every mix. As you can see the painting glows a warm summery tint, not what was intended. The quick fix would be to use less yellow but again with only three colours, the painting would be unbalanced lacking greens and oranges, two essential colours in a natural landscape.

There is no medium used and only the smallest amount of solvent (White Spirits). This is manageable as the painting is small, 9″ x 12″, but spreading ‘dry’ paint is difficult and time consuming. The advantage is a more textured effect, good in a small painting to suggest details, as painting details is difficult at such a small scale.

I will review this painting in a day or two and decide whether or not to continue to paint winter scenes using Cadmium Yellow. As usual I recorded the painting process for the next post, see you then.