Mystery

It is easy to get bored with any form of art if you paint the same thing over and over. I feel like I want mystery, atmosphere or movement in my work, and am willing to try it all to get this result. The palette knife has become my reliable friend and my paintings are getting this because of my confidence with the tool. The confidence did not come easy. It took perseverance after much trepiation. I have found the bigger the knife is, the easier I can move it, making the paint lift up and become exciting. I use the one like a cake knife shape, and it is my personal fave. I also have found some interesting colors to add atmospere to my comfortable limited palette. Here are some colors that I have used in this painting blog post that I will share with you. I have found a great result form Gamblin's Radient Violet gaining much color atmosphere mixing it with Naples Yellow, making this complement subtlely pop with a light neutral color. A dark without it being cold, is Coffee Brown by Shinhan. This rich color made me happy to find, and when I mixed it with Shiprock by Vasari, and my usual titanium-zinc white, the discovery was an Ahhaa moment to get this colorful resonating gray violet.  I have been experimenting with transparent colors and find a rich gold with transparent gold ochre and cadmium yellow medium with a spec of white is perfect for a lighter more tranquil yellow. The Schminke brand produces such rich yellows that I am using Schminke for my yellow choices. The ever baffling greens in landscape and in my abstracted landscape work is always a challenge and I find that the old standard of blue with yellow get the most beautiful greens for landscape, but mixing in some Bluff by Vasari for a toned down green and Cadmium Orange for a gray green and Radient Violet for an atmospheric background green is working. The ever powerful coral using Cad Red, Cad Yellow Lemon and Alizarin Crimson, adding a little white to the mix is so fabulous alone, but I added its complement of the Schminke's Golden Green in places and got a toned down version that was so harmonizing. I have been asked how I get some great yellows that are bouncing around in one shape, and I use them all at once, putting the individual puddles of warm yellow and cool yellow right on the knife and frosting the painting with it. letting it do its mixing right on the canvas, then temperatureof the arm with the cool  bounces it all around the shape ! Use them correctly with a little white or Yellow Nickel Titanate to even furter get them to bounce. Color mixing is tricky, but done right with temperature control of the warm and cool can be so fun. And glazing is so much fun at the end. Try Indothrone Blue for deepening skies or water. Try either Transparent Red Ochre or Raw Umber for a unifying look over a landscape.

I find that when I teach, the students do not like to use complements to get harmonzing colors and finally give in to it after much discovery that their colors are coming out just plain blah. I always get a kick out of it after much struggle, and them not listening to the master of mistakes who is me, then they have to get it and give in to the chore of this thinking of masterfully mixing complements, and it makes them excited that they can mix.