Palette cleansers are a new thing in my repertoire this year- a palate cleanser is a refreshing food item usually icy and minty, that is given in between courses at fancy restaurants. Palate is the roof of your mouth, palette is the thing artists use for painting. I use the opportunity of cleaning the little blobs of paint to experiment with abstracts, and to use the colours without any further mixing. What you see are the paints being used almost pure. Some artists call this 'straight from the tube' but I don't like that phrase because you are supposed to dilute the paint with water before applying it to the paper. I actually saw a video of a watercolour painter sticking his brush into the tube and trying to smear it on the wet paper which was not going very well. The artist was very confident though, I was concerned the people watching the video would try and copy that, but its bad for the brush, and not a very easy way to paint. Maybe next year I can look into making some videos! Being both and educator and a painter may be an asset to make instructional videos. And after the COVID year I am getting proficient at on line teaching and recordings.
Palette Cleanser #37, 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, October 2020
Here is a small abstract study, it was kind of a palette cleanser too, I needed to clean my phthalo green and didn't want to apply it to the other painting you see above. So I used a small cutting, and created some nice colours and shapes to compliment the green.
O Box Red Green Orange, 4 x 6" cold press, watercolour, October 2020
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