I have been told that I have to limit what I lift. So I'm going to lighten my plein air load. As part of my comeback I'm experimenting with a limited palette. Other efforts will follow.
This keeps the frustration level low as I avoid attacking a whole painting. I mixed with a palette knife to develop that skill again.
If warranted I often squeeze out both Yellow Ochre and Red Oxide tube colours. This seemed appropriate when earth tones dominated my concept for the painting at hand. So lets see if I can mix these two from my three primaries plus white - a light paint load for my plein air kit.
Yellow Ochre Mix
So in a few seconds I mixed a close yellow ochre. Started with Cadmium Yellow, then stepped (greyed it down) on it with some violet (Ultramarine Blue plus Alizarin). To lighten I added a bit of Titanium White. First shot success!
On the Way to Red Oxide
Here you can see that the Yellow Ochre mix is real close to yellow ochre from the tube. To go to Red Oxide I added some Alizarin to some Yellow Ochre mix. Needs the complement to grey it down.
A Red Oxide Mix
You can see the result of adding Ultramarine to the reddish mix. Pretty close to the tube red oxide. So, I can mix these earth tones and eliminate them from my pack. Later I'll show the light weight pack itself.
Seems I was on for this exercise, good news. Took only 24 minutes in the studio.
From the first exercise in this series you will recall that the limited palette cannot produce certain colours. I will explore this next.
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