Jenni With Her Foot On A Box

For colours, I started with indigo, chilli red, sea blue and teal green.  The plan was to use indigo in the darker places but otherwise ti make this a red and blue painting with the teal green appearing here and there and providing a bit of shock value.  I ended up also using sunshine yellow, mustard and field green.  And using bark for the background.

At some point while putting this one together, I made the conscious decision that it was going to be a colourful painting rather than one with lots of white areas.  This was the point at which I extended the range of colours.  I also decided at this point to put in the odd cold colour on left facing surfaces and warm colour on right facing.  Up to here, it had all been warm colours facing left and cold colours facing right.

Of course, I never know how these paintings will turn out until after I’ve watered them.  And today I wasn’t happy with the outcome.  The lower abdomen was all red on the left and green on the right.  So I added a bit more green on the left and red on the right.  The red gave me some good looking violets but the green muddied things a bit on the left, especially just above Jenni’s right thigh.  Maybe I need to stop applying the second washes and just accept the first attempt, warts and all.

In the end, it all looks a bit muddy.  I can either have the bark background or mix reds and blues to get neutrals and violets: I can’t do both.  When I do both, like I did here, the two feed off each other and make the while painting look muddy.  One other thing I did here (for the first time in ages) was to outline the figure.  I need to never do this again.  It doesn’t make for a good look.  Outlines are an artificial thing representing the border between different shapes.  If the shapes are there (either in reality or in the viewer’s imagination) then the border’s not necessary.  It’s not going up for sale.