Puddles of Paint

I did this demonstration in class yesterday. I want to talk about my palette and “puddles of paint.”

I am aware that my palette may seem strange to many painters. I come at painting as a pastelist and therefore use many more colors than are usual for most painters. Hey, they make them so I get them. By having this large array of colors I am able to combine my warms and cools to create lovely grays while saving my intense colors for dynamic “hits.”

I begin the painting as always, using an umber and roughly sketching in the still life in value. The shadows on the radishes as well as the cast shadows are equally important to the overall design as the radishes themselves.

I then begin to put down the general color field of each basic part..the radishes, the leaves, the background color. As I do this, each color is the beginning of a “puddle” on my palette. From this puddle, I can pull it into darker, lighter, warmer or cooler while I start to define the elements of the painting.

I’ll talk more about the specific colors of my palette tomorrow.