Aleksandra 21 February 2016

Today it is 21 of February and it is time for the final session of painting Aleksandra. The painting progress nicely but there is much work to do.

One thing I noticed is that the painting got a smudgy feeling to the colors and I would like to improve on this today. I think that this smudge has to do with the experiments with colors that I started on. I am mainly using a limited palette with Titanium White, Permanent Yellow light, Pyrrole Red, Burnt Sienna and Cobalt Blue (ultramarine). Actually it is only blue that brings the cold. Perhaps Titanium white can be a bit cold but if we leave that “uncertain” then it is one and only one doing the cold. So until the end of last year I used blue only as a way of darkening the other colors. Now I am trying to really create that purple and green and let it live in the painting. The challenge is that the blue can get into all colors on the palette. This is what I think happened to the painting at this point. “Blue contamination”. I think I need to be more cautious with where the blue lives. I need to be more careful about what brushes got blue and where on the painting there should be intense warm colors without any blue. Now I arrived in Amsterdam!

Now I am on my way home from the painting session at de Stoker. The first two sessions I was standing while painting Aleksandra. Now I was standing there and suddenly it became clear to me that the perspective I was painting was from an angle as if I was sitting but I was standing. So I decided to get a chair and sit down. It was wonderful to stop guess where things should be. I could correct a couple of things regarding the perspective. Wonderful!

This time painted together with Renske, Luc, Bas, Lotte, Saskia and Jochem. It was wonderfully quiet, no humming and singing and plop sounds. It was delightful.

I worked according to my plan to get more warm colors into the painting. The next surprise I had was the lighting. I was standing between two light sources. On my right side I the main lamp. It is a warm yellow strong lamp. Om my other site I had a cold fluorescent lamp. If I angled my panel just slightly then it had an enormous impact on my registration of the colors. This half mix was bad. When I decided to angle the panel so that I received almost only the cold light then I could get in command of the colors I were using. It is actually not that good not to have the light situation under sufficient control. Perhaps there exists some light weight led lamps where you can adjust the color temperature that I could mount on my easel. Would be great. Here I am working hard to improve my skills in controlling my use of color and then I working under unclear circumstances. That could be improved.

I must say that there are really colorful parts in this painting. Yes I am pleased with the result.

Next week I will be on holidays so then there is no painting session. The week after that I will be at the easel again.