Colours of Summer

These summer colours are bogland shades, quite different from the agricultural greens of cultivated land. At this time of year I need a break from the aforementioned colour so I exchange lush grass for the heathers of ‘marginal’ land. The reds, oranges and purples make a nice change.

I read recently the EU are considering a ban on Cadmium paints because of the dangers to the environment. Apparently when we wash our brushes, the Cadmium gets into the waste water and then into the sewerage processing plants. The waste is then spread on agricultural land, ending up in the food chain. Will the ban come to pass? Possibly.

This is not the reason I’m using Winsor Lemon yellow at the moment. I just wanted a yellow with less red than Cadmium, more of a pure yellow. The Winsor colours were developed by Winsor and Newton as pure colour like the rainbow colours. Its a nice clean yellow but gets a bit ‘muddy’ in mixes. So good colour, bad mixer is how I would rate it.

The painting has only 4 colours, Winsor Lemon Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber and Cobalt Blue plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits.

The sky here is one of those ‘patterned’ varieties I’m seeing a lot lately. The difficulty with these cloud formations is the perspective as the clouds stretch away to the horizon. As you will see in the video I painted a ‘grid’ in blue where the rules of perspective are easy to apply. On this grid the clouds are roughly placed. Its a great help when you are trying to get apparent random shapes on the one hand and follow a strict perspective layout on the other.

Here’s the video. See you soon.