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| Creek Colors 9x12 oil Available - $700 - Frame/Shipping Included |
A friend recently said, "Fall lasts long in Sedona." And it does! You can still find pockets of fall color here and there along the creeks. Yesterday, I went down to Red Rock Crossing with our plein air group to catch a little before the last of it dropped.
I also wanted to play with a palette revision. Normally, I use (from left to right on the palette):
- cadmium yellow light
- cadmium yellow medium
- cadmium red light
- permanent alizarin crimson
- ultramarine blue
- phthalo green
- chromatic black
- titanium-zinc white
This time, I replaced the mineral cadmiums with organic modern colors and also replaced the alizarin with a modern version of a red earth color. (Not very scientific, changing so many variables at once.) So, yesterday's palette was:
- hansa yellow light
- hansa yellow deep
- napthol red
- transparent earth red
- ultramarine blue
- viridian
- chromatic black
- titanium-zinc white
(Okay, I changed out the green, too.) In many ways, this new palette looks and acts like the old palette. The viridian, of course, is a little easier to handle than the phthalo green since it mutes easily. The most different player, however, was the transparent earth red. It is not as "clean" a cool red as the alizarin, so it dulls down the blue in mixtures. That is, it doesn't make as rich a violet. In fact, it results in a very earthy violet.
For the painting above, I toned the surface first with transparent earth red and then wiped it down to just leave a stain. (I didn't want it mixing up with my other colors.) Then I used chromatic black to establish all my darks. I followed this with more transparent red for all the trees, then blue for the sky, and finally modified the reds with the other colors I saw in the landscape. Back in the studio, I also added a dash of napthol scarlet to the foreground water for zest.
There's quite a bit of unruly color in this painting, and believe it or not, I did knock down the chroma quite a lot with complements. I used a painting knife exclusively, which probably also account for the strong color. But who doesn't like color?
All paints are by Gamblin Artist Colors.
