It's been twelve days since I last painted in watercolour. Just too many things going…
Hartlip Church Tower 2
Tempting as it is to binge read my pile of new art instruction books, I do really need to test out some of my new art gear. First up are the fineliner pens, which means I’m dashing and splashing for the first time. As a gentle introduction to this new direction, I thought I’d head to Hartlip Church as it’s one of those subjects that it’s hard to go wrong with. I took my 5×7 inch hot pressed pad and my pens and didn’t know how many drawings I’d be doing. Being too tired after one drawing would be a fail. Two would probably meet expectations. I actually ended up with three drawings and could easily have done more: the sketches were completed more quickly than expected.
I should probably explain how this colour selection works. The spreadsheet was asked to pick one of 22 colours, all with equal probability. It chose Prussian blue. Then, from the 22 colours I eliminated all the blues (Prusssian, cerulean, French ultramarine, indigo, Windsor (green shade) and Payne’s grey). This left 16 colours all given equal probabilities and the spreadsheet was asked to pick one. It picked yellow ochre, so I eliminated the all five yellows, and from the remaining 11 colours the spreadsheet picked out Winsor violet. The box where I’ve written in the subject doesn’t feed into any formulae but every time I enter in a different subject, a new set of colours is selected. This was all done in an app called Numbers – if it was in Excel I could have incorporated a randomise button instead. It’s also quite handy to have the subject filled in when I’m doing multiple paintings and I can take screenshots and keep track of which colours apply to each painting.
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