Summer Sunset

Recent sunsets have a distinct lack of red in the glowing skies. It this because the wet weather is cleaning dust from the atmosphere?

As you probably know, I use Alkyd fast drying oil paint for some of the colours. In this case they are all Alkyd, except the Cobalt Blue. This is because Cobalt Blue is only available as Cobalt Blue ‘Hue” in the Alkyd range. It is probably OK as its produced by W&N, but I have Cobalt Blue as a standard artist oil so I used it. Alkyds and standard oils are mixable and work well together in mixes. Problems can occur if the Alkyd is applied in layers on top of standard oils (in the traditional manner) because it dries so fast.

And it does dry fast. Forgetting to clean the brushes for a few hours will be disastrous. The advantage, of course, is that the painting is completely dry in 24 hours (thin layer of paint, solvent only). If I needed, I could ‘oil out’ (with slow drying medium) after another 24 hours and the painting is finished in a few days.

This painting uses only 3 colours (Indian Yellow, Permanent Rose, Cobalt Blue) plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits. The size is 16″ x 12″.

Here’s the painting process. See you soon.