Its a tacky painting in more ways than one. The paint itself was a gooey mess on my palette due to the high heat and humidity, and the design is a little tacky too. I opted for a psychedelic design with colours to match. The idea of combining pastels with primaries was something I picked up from studying Klimpt paintings and making a few paintings on the theme. It works because the pastels are essentially shades of grey with subtle tints, which provides a good contrast for the higher chroma primary colours. Primary colours are usually thought of as red, yellow, green and blue, but any high chroma, definitive colour can be considered a primary, such as orange. There is an idea that certain colours are secondary, and even tertiary, but those ideas serve little purpose and can lead to errant colour schemes. In the Victorian era some artists thought that colours had some inherent quantity that could be balanced through careful design, but there really is no basis for those ideas other than the esthetics of the time. After reading a lot of painting literature I found that many artists write about and try to teach colour theory, yet when they paint it seems to go out the window. If you want to make dark grey, mix ultramarine blue with brunt sienna! But it wont work with red and green (which makes caramel brown), or purple and yellow (which makes a smoky grey). So whatever. Or whatever works.
Tacky Painting, watercolour 9 x 12" cold press, July 2023 (No. 3639a)
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