Tomato #167

Cadmium Lemon, Quinacridone Red, Prussian Blue and Permalba White

This tomato took an unexpected turn to purple and green. I wanted to emphasize the Prussian without it being as blue as #163 so it makes sense that it would result in a green tomato. I did not plan on using so much purple but it seemed to work in shading and they are complementary colors so I headed in that direction. The yellow is what made it interesting even though you really don't see it. Yellow produced the green and white cooled it. Prussian and Cad. Lemon make a very intense green-almost like a Permanenet Green, so the red and white softened the effect. The actual painting is very dramatic and the light intense. This time I was able to cover the Cad. Red Lt. ground with the Permalba White.

Tomato #166

Cadmium Lemon, Quinacridone Red, Prussian Blue and Permalba White

Second in this series-painted on a Cadmium Red Dark ground, this one focuses on the yellow. I started out very green-then I started putting on a small bit of yellow and white mixed with the green- mixed all three and put in the gray background. I think I painted almost the whole thing without really cleaning my brush, which gave it it's mellow feeling. I used Permalba white as it was already on my palette. It does not seem to have the opacity of titanium white-I could not get it to cover the ground, even adding a small bit of Prussian to cool it. I used very little paint- this one seemed to complete itself with ease. Very mellow considering the strong colors used in this.

Painted September 5, 2010

Tomato #165

Cadmium Lemon, Quinacridone Red, Prussian Blue and Permalba White

I painted this on a Cadmium Red ground. This one started out to be very dramatic-I might should have stopped there, but I didn't and my end result is a much softer, gauzy representation. In fact almost all of my more recent tomatoes are "gauzy", much softer edges. Warm light and cool darks are visible here. I was reading about color harmony in the book ALLA PRIMA by Richard Schmid and I was trying to apply some of the principles here; cool lights-warm darks and vice versa-did it work? I can tell more when this one dries. I am going to try to make this a series of three, but I am wondering about doing this with Prussian Blue-it is so strong. I did successfully mute it here. I love using Q. Red and C. Lemon-such juicy color.

Painted September 4, 2010

Tomato #164

Cadmiun Lemon, Cadmium Orange, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White

I painted this on a Cad. Red Lt. ground-some visible through the white foreground. This is the third of this series, with yellow being the focus of this tomato. It could have been more of a yellow-green tomato but it ended up with much more orange. I used a lot of blue; on the shadow side, background and cast shadow, but with the addition of a small amount of the other colors it becomes a wonderful gray. This tomato has more of a cantelope coloration. I did not use as much orange as you see-cadmium orange is just very strong and dominates the colors.

Painted September 3, 2010

Recent Paintings

A Slice of Still Life

   oil on canvas
     10"x10"

    

                                                        Zinnia Perch

                                                        oil on board
                                                           4"x 6"
                                              

Tomato #163

Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Orange, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White

Not your average tomato- I've yet to see this variety, but this second in the series focused on the Cobalt Blue. This was fun to do and was not difficult. To get the lights I used the lemon and cobalt mixed with white, more cobalt than lemon was in the mix to keep it from turning green. Some of that green is on the shadow side, but it is tempered with orange. When painting this I ended up with some really nice colors that could be ussed in foliage and ocean waters. The warm blue-gray cast shadow is a mix of all the colors. This was a very valuable exercise because of all the colors yielded in the mix used to paint this tomato. One note-Cobalt does not seem to have the strength of Ultramarine Blue or Prussian to create strong darks.

Painted September 2, 2010

Tomato #162

Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Orange, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White

The first of this series shows how Cadmium Orange can dominate. I used a lot of Cobalt Blue on the shadow side of the tomato and unless it is used full strength, mixing with the orange takes it to a soft brown. I haven't used Cobalt Blue enough to know it's strength but in this exercise it becomes a muting factor. I used a fair amount of Cadmium Lemon in the light areas always with white, which cools it some. The background is a mixture of all colors with white which makes a very warm gray. The cast shadow has all colors too with a blue overlay hoping to cool it, but I'm not sure that the blue didn't actually warm it.

Painted September 1, 2010