With all of the painting lately, it was about time for some palette cleansers where I clean the palette literally and proverbially. On location I usually stick to the colours of the scenery which tend to be green, green, brown and blue. The rarest colours on location are red, magenta, and violet. For about a month now I had quinacridone cherry red (PR209) on the palette but it was not working well enough so I have gone back to pyrol red. In fact the paint I have now is called cadmium red hue, which is a mix of pyrol red (PR254) and nickel titanate yellow (PY53). Despite the name there is no cadmium in it which is toxic, this is a replacement formula that closely matches the original cadmium red paint.
Crabapple contours, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024
Brilliant red, yellow, orange and magenta shapes are broken up by a black and white pattern cutting across the diagonal. An organic eyeball seems to float in space. There is a game called eye spy where one person picks a colour and the other tries to guess where it is. Looking at this painting it seemed to be a high spy.
High Spy, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024
Hearing about the titanic and how its disintegrating on the ocean floor I learned a new word, rusticle. Its like an icicle made of rust hence the clever name. The formation is created by iron bacteria that can dissolve and consume iron oxides this creating the drippy brownish shapes. The amount of iron oxide pigment in this painting seemed fitting. Van Gogh was known to eat his paint, maybe he got a rusticle surprise the next day?
Rusticle Surprise, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024
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