Blue Christmas

This is a nice combination of colours with the dominant one being Prussian Blue. Its little wonder the overall colour of the painting is this strong bright blue. From a distance the blue would seem too much but I found as I enter this blue landscape it seems natural. I think this illustrates the importance of including a ‘spectrum’ of colour in a landscape. I will always have the red, yellow and blue represented by colours which fit into these groupings.

In this painting the blue skewed the colour into the blue end of the ‘spectrum’ and this is OK if there are yellows and reds there as well. How different this is from a ‘monochrome’ painting where a single colour only is used. An popular example of this type of painting are sepia sketches. No matter how ‘realistic’ the rendering, the element of ‘real world’ is not there. We are always conscious we are viewing a ‘drawing’.

This means I will never have less than three colours in a painting. With so few colours its important to know which colours ‘fit’ well together. Its only with experience that these combinations can be worked out. Not only must they look well together but they must also mix well together. An example of this is Indian Red. Its a brilliant rust red in the tube. But all mixes with this colour produce ‘dirty’ colours. Burnt Sienna is a similar colour, but the mixes are clean. In this painting the grey of the clouds is made from a mix of Burnt Sienna and Prussian Blue. The resultant grey is clean and vibrant enough for fluffy clouds.

Here is the video of the painting process. See you soon.