Work in Progress

I did get a bit of time to paint this weekend. I spent most of that time mixing colours, as I'm completely obsessed with colour theory at the moment. It's fascinating stuff, once you get into it!

But I'm also making some progress on my current project - a lovely pink poppy. I've been working on the background for the last couple of weeks now. And I did ditch some of the colour theory principles in the process, in favour Elizabeth Kincaid's advice instead. I was going to use my ultramarine to create some dark greens, but I found that the one I have is not transparent enough for glazing. It leaves big deposits of paint in the hollows of the paper, and doesn't give the dark effect I was hoping for. I ended up with patchy mud. So I used good old reliable vanadium yellow and phthalo blue and some dioxazine violet. Phthalo blue gives really rich darks when you apply a thick wash - exactly what I wanted.

I've now taken the masking paper and fluid off, and will be starting on the veins in the poppy. I'll need to do a few dry runs first, so don't expect results too soon!