Today I opened my insanely ancient sketchbook that I would really like to finish with no idea what I was going to do, so I stared at the blank page for a few minutes. Sometimes I think gardening and painting involve a very similar process of standing and staring at things until something in the brain tissue activates.
I eventually decided on a colour mixing exercise, and then I closed my eyes and selected two random colours from my trolley. I had no idea what I was going to open my eyes to, and in my head I was thinking about natural, muted colours, and then I opened my eyes…
I reminded myself that these colours can easily be found in nature, and they are vaguely analogous, and I do love the Permanent Red Violet Light, and often make peace with the Azo Orange, and that my initial reaction might make the end result even more sweet. Or a complete disaster, but I was committed. Aside from these two colours, I squeezed out some Lamp Black, Zinc White and Titanium White onto my palette and set to.
I had no plan, just play and see what happens. I chose a brush I haven’t used before, a recent purchase, and I really like it, so that’s the first bonus of the exercise. It was inexpensive too, so that’s another bonus.
Here’s the page I filled…
I love doing exercises like this, and I should do them more often, because it’s always fun to stretch the paint and see what can be done with a very limited palette. I haven’t even stretched this as far as it could go, but there’s a lot to savour on this page.
I especially like the very light section in the centre, which is still a blend of these two colours with some black and then a lot of white. It could be a skin tone, and it’s not a colour that’s an obvious product of the two initial colours.
I have bought all the colours under the sun, and I can do this with two colours, but I probably won’t let that stop me collecting more.
Feeling satisfied with myself, I cleaned off the palette and thought I would move onto some portrait practise with my trusty shitty, scratchy brushes, and caput mortuum, and that’s what I did.
Instead of practising in my sketchbook, I used a larger piece of cartridge paper prepped with gesso, and I painted on a scratchy portrait. While I was painting, I wondered what the portrait would look like if I used the limited palette I had been playing with earlier.
Having cleaned the palette, I had to start again with mixing, and I didn’t look at my earlier page for inspiration, I just started mixing and playing, and using the new brush to lay colour onto the portrait underpainting.
Here she is…
Pleased with today 🙂
Til the morn,
Suzanne
173/200
Thrummie Bizzum 
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