When I am painting I really try to focus on value, and I have mentioned before different ways of analysing values as I am working. My favourite way is using my small rectangle of red perspex to view my painting as I am working. It’s simple, and instant.
Once I started focusing on values, and trying to improve this aspect of my paintings, I soon discovered that, like many artists, I have a tendency to stick to the mid tones, and that some colours that look like darks are not really dark at all.
When I was painting The Vivienne, I was doing my practise with values, and trying to match my paint values to those in the reference image, a practise that has vastly improved my colour mixing and given me much more confidence with colour.
One thing that I tried with this painting was trying not to use black at all, and, with the exception of a few false eyelashes, there is no black in the painting. All the darks are mixed with Van Dyke Brown and French Ultramarine.
You can mix blacks, or very dark darks, in several other ways. The basic combo is a dark blue, like ultramarine, and one of the dark earthy colours.
Here’s what I did today with a few different blues, and Burnt Umber as the earth colour.
After mixing the darks, I used Titanium White with each dark to make the greys, and they are just so much more lush than if I had only used black and white.
I was going to finish today’s blog here, but then I popped on YouTube, and the first thing that popped up was a new video which Sandi Hester dropped yesterday – here. In the video she mixes and swatches a bunch of darks using her limited palette, and mixes some with black. A timely coincidence. I highly recommend her channel, it’s a treasure trove of inspiring videos.
I’ll be carrying on my black mixing project tomorrow.
Something else I got up to today involved pulling out a lot of my paintings and sorting them into two piles – this is my voice, and this is not my voice. It was quite illuminating, and tied in with some thoughts I have been having recently.
Til the morn,
Suzanne
336/400
Thrummie Bizzum 
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