The Tatra Mountains, Slovakia

More watercolour! More European mountains! More Slovakia? No. Let me stop you there. These mountains are in Slovakia; yesterdays were in Slovenia. Different countries. And Slovakia are playing in the Euros today, by the way, so this is two days in a row where I’ve painted landscapes in countries that are playing that day.

After using supergranulators yesterday, I’m back to the main palette today and wanted to give the potters pink a decent debut. So for the three primaries I picked out Mayan blue genuine, quinacridone magenta and transparent yellow purely on the basis of the effects I’ve seen when they mix with the pink. French ultramarine was a possible blue but mixes with the pink to get to tundra pink, which I only used yesterday. Cadmium red, cadmium: yellow and white gouache all made cameo appearances at the end but, with those three min primaries, this is in the key of green cool.

With the exception of the sky, which was mainly in the blue with a little of the pink, this was all painted with mixes of potters pink and the three primaries, albeit in constantly changing proportions. The mountains started with lots of dark marks in the most shadowy areas, followed by some medium tones, then a light spraying and finally a weak neutral glaze to bring everything together. The foreground started with lots of dry brush marks, which I later unified with a glaze over before adding some dry grassy marks and finally some opaque red, yellow and white spatters. The sky was just wet into wet and not added in until after I’d painted the mountains: just like with the coloured pencil painting a few days ago, I wanted to see what the rest of the painting looked like before adding the sky.

And that was me done. I like the mountains and the sky and the way they work together, especially from a distance. I’m wishing the foreground stood out against the background a bit more, though, and the foreground horizon line feels a bit too smooth for my liking. Still, I think this one is worth a place in the shop window.