A chilly start to 2021- we've enjoyed clear, bright but freezing days. Sunrise and sunsets have been stunning. Too cold for painting outside but a great time to take photos and collect specimens for working up in the studio.
A cornfield by Moonlight by Samuel Palmer (one of my favourite artists). This painting is where I am in my head when I am out on a horse in the moonlight. It is possible for just a few weeks between harvest and sowing when we are allowed to cross the stubble. The days are still too warm and full of flies for my delicate (!) horses so we head out in the moonlight to explore land that is for most of the year out of bounds. The agrarian landscape is very different from Palmer's day; gone are the corn stooks - these days the shorter GM crops are all munched up by modern harvesters but the moon still works it's magic in the still, balmy evenings.
The days are getting shorter. This morning, out early with the dog, owls were still hooting as we walked under late stars. We disturbed the white heron down by the river and noticed brambles and elders hanging on to the last of this years fruits.
Colour theory is an essential reference for any artist. Most of us have a vague memory of colour wheels from our school days but apart from reminding us that yellow and blue make green, blue and red make violet, and red and yellow make orange, what use is it? First things first - the subtractive colour wheel is based on the three primary colours of red, yellow and blue. This is the colour wheel for painters and creators of things which are seen via reflected light. If all three primaries of this model come together you get, (in theory), black, (in practice mud!). Other colour models exist; you will likely be aware of the red, green, blue, additive colour wheel which works for projected light images, (on your computer for example). If these three light based colours come together they produce white light - think Dark Side of the Moon prisms! As painters we need be concerned only with the subtractive colour wheel. The theory states that from the three primary colours, (red, yello
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