Blending Fun

Getting up at 5:30 in the morning is not my thing; it was worth it, of course, to view the magnificent cherry blossoms at dawn in the Tidal Basin. But I felt groggy once we got home, and needed a two-hour nap to set things right. Then we had a super-early dinner.

I did get down to the basement studio to work on In Case Of Emergency late this afternoon, and hope to work on those two little America series paintings tonight.

In Case Of Emergency, © 2018, work in progress (click on image for larger view) 

 

There's glare on the upper left corner of this painting from the ceiling light. It's actually quite dark there, due to the use of pretty much straight-out-of-the-tube Sennelier Gris Froid; it occurred to me that it would be smart to stick with one base color for the grey shadows rather than use mixes of different blacks, whites, and greys. I usually lean toward Payne's Gray for cool shadows, but it looks too bluish here. 

 

Blending one shadow area into another is really difficult. You don't want the brush strokes to show, so you've got to go over a transition again and again, and the brush picks up either the lighter value or the darker one and ruins that delicate balance you're trying to achieve. So I'm going slowly and trying not to make mistakes. Plus, some of the reds and blacks from the last session are still not completely dry.