Palette Cleanser #28

Palette cleaning really helps maintain bright colours in my paintings. I used to keep a very dirty palette where the colours were left from previous paintings. It was done intentionally, and maybe with a little lack of preparation, because I knew that bright colours did not really exist in nature. Having the dirty palette was, in effect, a way of having a touch of grey in the paints. As I blogged about the early works recently, I noticed that most of those older paintings do look rather grey and cold sometimes, which was not the intended outcome. The latest Verdun paintings show a completely different appearance, light and bright. The other breakthrough was reading MacEvoy's Handprint .com, he said that you have to paint a little brighter that you think if you want it to look good hanging on the wall. 

This palette cleanser was inspired by the group of seven! Before going out to paint today I flipped through my Group of Seven coffee table book, and saw a snow scene by A.J. Casson and was amazed by the variations in pastel blue and purples, and how it contrasted against the dark sap green, and glowing yellow light. I tried to copy the colours here, using an abstraction of organic shapes.  

9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, August 2020