April Sunshine

On these dry, cold and windy days we get a flashback of the past winter. In recent paintings I began to use colours like Cadmium Yellow to express the colourful growth of Spring. Here I used ‘Winter’ colours to paint the brightness and promise, hopefully, of finer days to come.

The 3 colours I used here were, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber and Cerulean Blue. This blue is a mild warm colour, not good in mixes to produce green or purples so the overall end result is blues and browns, ideal for this subject. As you probably know I use Alkyd fast drying oil colours. Some colours, like Cerulean, are not available in the Alkyd range. The Cerulean is a ‘hue’ for some reason. Maybe its OK but in these cases I use the traditional oil colour. Alkyd and and ordinary oils are compatible when mixed but should not painted in distinct layers (each dry before the next is applied) with the Alkyd as the final. Alkyd dries so fast it would retard the final drying of under layers of ordinary oils. As my method is ‘alls prima’ the paint get well mixed before they are applied as a single layer.

The Alkyd colours tend to be more transparent than their equivalent oil colours. This was noticeable when painting the blue of the sky. The white, which was Alkyd Titanium, added a transparency to the blue mix which is not usual for the very opaque Cerulean Blue. It looks more like the Cobalt or Ultramarine blues in terms of transparency, very nice for this sky.

Here is the video, see you soon.