Scarlet Flood

The new year starts with great skies, here’s one.

There are only 3 colours used in this painting. They are the primaries, yellow, red and blue. Up until recently I used colours which were weak versions of the 3 primaries. For example, Burnt Sienna for red or Yellow Ochre for yellow. The secondary mixes were subtle soft colours and I would introduce the raw colour, here and there, to perk up these colours. Where the secondary mix was particularly weak, like the green produced by Yellow Ochre and Cerulean Blue, a ‘tube’ green like Viridian was used.

This painting is produced by very strong primary colours, Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson & Ultramarine Blue. To produce a natural landscape with these vivid colours requires using all 3 colours, even in tiny amounts, in each mix. The initial under colours are the lowest quantity in the mixes. For example, the red in the sky is under painted with blue and the blue of the sky is under painted with red. Because its ‘wet on wet’ there is a little bit of this under colour picked up in the final layers. The more you brush the more is picked up. To perk up these layers some of the under colour is left uncovered.

All is revealed in the following video. And remember, to view in realtime change speed setting to .25. Quality can also be set to 1080HD.

Colours used Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue plus black and white. All Alkyd Oil Paints. There is no medium used, only White Spirits solvent. The size is 16.5″ x 10″ and was painted in a single session in under 2 hours.