The last week in June when all my perennials were in full bloom, I decided to set myself a goal and try to do 7 paintings in 7 days. I did manage to do 4 and 1/2 paintings in 5 days and then I kind of burnt out. I finally went back to finish the fifth painting and rework a background that I still wasn’t happy with.
Also, as a testament to my ultimate laziness, when I started the first painting I discovered I was out of white paint; rather than go buy some I decided to try painting without white. It was interesting to paint without white, and it made me realize that I may rely on it a little too much. The first painting became very moody with very rich colours, and it reminded me that one of my instructors had once said to beware of white paint since it can kill your colour.
So the first 3 paintings (the Snapdragons, the Lilacs and the orange background Snow-in-summer) were done without any white paint. Any white you see is the gessoed ground. This required a little more planning than I’m used to as well since I had to try not to cover any light reflections early on.
The whole project was an interesting exercise and for the final 2 paintings I decided to use white and found myself using it sparingly.
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