New Shapes and Things

This is a 6×6″ wee canvas board painted using oils. I was trying a couple of things, first a brush that I’m not familiar with, which I think I like, and second trying a colour mix I’m not familiar with, which I am not convinced about.

There’s a thing doing the rounds on the algorithms with an artist selling his monumental colour mixing guide, and one of his adverts talks about this great secret no-one knows about which will making your painting look better than everyone else’s (if you’re a regular you may guess approximately where my eyes roll to on this).

Aside from mentioning that the ads have been seen millions of times, and therefore the big secret is kind of out of the bag now, I should mention that I don’t have a problem with colour-mixing guides per se. I think whatever way you learn is the way that works. I learn by doing and experimenting and making my mistakes, as I yet again learned today 😀

Anyway, one of the greatest secrets of art, apparently, is “using Hansa Yellow instead if white to lighten tints”. I don’t have Hansa Yellow in an oil paint, but the pigment number is PY3, and I do have a tube of a yellow using that single pigment, so…

Everything up around the knee and the hand sneaking round went yellow, which isn’t really showing up in this photo, although you might be able to discern that area is thicker with paint from my trying to correct it. We went on a bit of a journey, that knee hand combo and I.

I find this really funny, because yellow is usually a bit of a wimp that struggles to make an impact in a mix, but it made up for that today. A classic of the genre of “it looked fine on the grey palette but then I painted it on an orange background” variety.

All of that said, I still like the result, for only my second attempt at this pose. It’s a new one, and I’m so happy to see Dinoopis posting new Shapes on Instagram this past week. Not that I have come anywhere close to painting all her Shapes, but the new images are definitely on my list.

Til the morn,

Suzanne

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