New Paint

Recently I removed some of the more toxic paints from my collection of tubes in order to be better for the environment. To replace the blue I got  version of phthalo blue (yellow shade) and quinacridone scarlet (cherry red). They are very transparent and easy to mix together to produce a range of lilacs and purples. With lemon yellow I was able to make various tints and blends. The painting here is a trial of the various colours in washes and layers, along with some ultramarine blue for comparison.

5x 7" cold press, April 2017

The Funeral of Sky Blue

After doing some reading I realized that there were several pigments that contained somewhat toxic ingredients. A few I knew of already, such as cobalt blue and aureolin yellow, and I had stopped using the a long time ago, but there were a few others that I was not aware of including cerulean blue. This version of blue is ideal for painting the sky because it is the exact hue of a sunny-day blue sky. Look in the middle of the painting for a good example. Virtually every outdoor painting I have done has contained cerulean blue, so it was a difficult decision to give it up.  To replace it, I got phthalo blue which it pretty close if you mix with some ultramarine and keep it a thin wash. So I had this tiny bit of cerulean blue left on my palette and decided to memorialize it in this painting called The Funeral of Sky Blue, although it could have been called the retirement of sky blue since other people are probably still using it (some pigments have been outright banned, and more may follow especially in Europe the cadmium colours are under scrutiny). If you are a painter and concerned, search 'the color of art pigment database' and there is an excellent source that tells you the names and alternate names of all pigments. It is easier to use the colour code, for cerulean blue it was PB35 (which I put on the head of the tombstone!). I also learned that one of my other favorite colours alizarin crimson has a suspect lightfastness, that is, the quality of the paint that makes is last in direct sunlight. Alizarin will almost dissapear if kept in direct sunlight for 3 years I read somewhere. I inspected my old paintings and they look fine although they have been in portfolios all this time so kept out of light. Luckily replacing alizarin was easier, I am now using the quinacridones (e.g. PR209) which are low toxic and high lightfast.  Notice the sky does not have any blue in it, which provides another meaning for this painting (global warming). There is another detail, a portrait of Sky Blue when alive is seen in the flower arrangement, it is a square of sky blue. By the way, my other pigment tubes are attending the funeral in the painting.

11 x 15 ' cold press watercolour. 2017

End Products...

There were four paintings all in the same style and in the same location in my collection, and this one was labelled 2014, so I think all four were done around the same time. More recently I started to put the date on each painting so that I could remember when they were done. After over 25 years of painting there is quite a pile of them, and the doodle style, I've been doing that style now since around 2004 or a bit earlier. Time really flies, it feels like yesterday I was sitting in London Ontario painting the vast 'Construction at Site 22" in fact I can almost remember every brush stroke of that painting. The painting in this post, well, I honestly do not remember painting it, which is odd because for 99% of the work I have done there is a clear memory, but then again I was going through an issue at this time that may have affected me. It's a neat painting though, and recently I have been trying to redo it on a larger scale with a bit more... planning!

15x 22" cold press, watercolour. 2014