Lab Book #14, Part 6: the Sideshow

I decided to post another today (see previous post for Barbados Cruise Boat), it is part 6 in the Lab book #14 miniseries. I ran in to a particularly tough string of doodles in my notes, most of which were tiny little abstract landscapes, which made it rather difficult to create a sideshow scene. There is a stage in the middle of the painting towards the bottom, on which a twisty spider-monkey thing stands, a ghost-like onlooker watches. My favorite part is the salt shaker in the top right, and the couple having a picnic in the bottom right. I'll talk a bit about painting yellow, because it is the most problematic for beginner/amateur artists. The main problem is that yellow right from the tube has a very low value (on the dark-lightness scale it is very light) so when you put it in a painting without further mixing it looks kind of fake. To make a yellow with a darker value, you need to mix in a little bit of blue and red and maybe a bit of green. Or with watercolour, you can lay down the yellow pure, let it dry, and then overlay with a purply/greenish layer. That is what I did in the lower left of the painting. It is hard to tell from the photo, but in real life, that part of the painting is a shimmering yellow tone, like creme brule, or a nice golden lager beer. Hmm, that gives me ideas. 12x16, hot press, 2009