If you plan to have a blue sky in a painting, a blue underpainting is a really easy way to start! For each of these paintings, I painted the whole surface a streaky blue and than painted everything else of top of it. Therefore, not only is the sky already painted-there are bits of blue peaking through everywhere that add harmony to the painting!
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with painting my entire panel with a solid color before beginning the painting. I don’t thin the paint, but sometimes wipe it off a bit with a paper towel if I get it on too thickly. For the following paintings I used a cadmium red underpainting. I really like how the underpainting unifies the paintings!
In my blog, I am trying various color schemes to expand my painting vocabulary. To that end, I am selecting a different color scheme/limited palette each week and basing three little 8 x 6 paintings upon that color palette.
For these three paintings, I used predominately Dioxazine Purple, Cerulean Blue and Yellow Ochre. I love the way that Cerulean Blue and Dioxazine Purple look together-especially in a lovely cloudy sky! The purple is wonderful for showing trees at a distance. I did use a couple additional colors. I mixed Yellow Ochre with Ultramarine Blue along with a little of the purple for the darks of the trees. Where I wanted a brighter, truer green I mixed the Cerulean Blue with Cadmium Yellow.
Therefore, the colors used in these three paintings are-
Dioxazine Purple
Yellow Ochre
Cerulean Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Cadmium Yellow
Titanium White
