Backyard Thaw

Today it was sunny and warm and a lot of people were outside not wearing masks carrying on like the whole pandemic is over, I hope they are right. But it caused me to stay home most of the day and just do one painting out of our little backyard alley. The main subject matter was the nice warm brick wall and the neat shadow. If you look carefully you see the famous auto mechanic just behind the wall. The lawn is still a brown green with some signs of life. 

Backyard Thaw 5 x 6 3/4" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2582a)

 

I have been working on my new palette for the summer, it is slightly bigger with two extra mixing areas which will increase my colour range and the size of the paintings I can do on location. The new palette has slots for 24 plus a few extras. Carrying this many colours on location will be tricky at first so I am trying to organize it smartly. In the painting shown above I was trying to work out which blue paint to include on the palette, in the end I cut prussian blue (PB27) because it is a little redundant with the phthalo blues, and it is a bit unpredictable in mixes. The new phthalo turquoise (PB16) is proving to be the ideal horizon blue for skies. 

Battle of the Blues and Some Reds 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2582b)