Well, the very first week events got in the way and it’s Thursday before I get back to you. But here goes.
After you have worked in those three basic colors Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Yellow Light for a while you might want to expand your palette a bit. There would be two reasons to do that. The first would be to make a larger range of greens. Let me say that I don’t buy tube greens and I paint with a lot of green. I like to have a couple of blues and two yellows and loosely mix with my brush (not homogenize with a palette knife). The next blue I would buy is Prussian blue. It is a beautiful transparent, deep blue. It’s is also great in shadows as a general dark, alone and mixed with alizarin.
The next yellow would be Indian Yellow. While this color is no longer made from the urine of Indian cows who had been fed mango leaves and denied water, it is still a wonderful color. Used alone it is a gorgeous transparent rich deep yellow which will make subdued greens when mixed with either of the blues mentioned above. When mixed with Titanium white it gives a wide range of bright sunshine yellows.
One other color I will mention this week is Cerulean Blue. French Ultra Blue is a cool blue. Use it for winter skies and those mountians you want to recede. But we live in the South and you may have noticed that things are warm. These days our skies are Cerulean Blue and many of our greens are bright enough to be made with this brighter blue. Prussian Blue plus white is a reasonable substitute for Cerulean, but the tube Cerulean is brighter and I do buy it regularily. I use it for spot highlights as well. Remember that Cerulean is opaque and will dull down quicker than the other two. Hint: If you are painting those evening skies we’ve been seeing these last few days add a bit of Alizarin to those clouds.
Will talk about the second reason next time. Have fun painting.