Some colour study painting today. I wanted to do three but the first and arguably most simple took longer than expected, that was for the Wales painting.
This is the second, a picture called Happy Butterflies. I didn't like the red curl shape on the far right and experimented with alternatives; violet, and oranges, but in the end I decided that black (near black) was the best option for symbolic reasons. It just felt perfect. The looks were entirely secondary.
As with most of the studies I paint these are just the underpainting colours, and so can often be quite different from the final pictures. I tend to use cobalt turquoise for blues for example, so violet shades are revealed only during glazing. These are all earth colours or metal oxides. To paint studies quickly I scan my underdrawing into the computer, then print onto thick white card. Those are glued to a solid board then primed with acrylic medium, then acrylic gesso to make a non-absorbent surface that's relatively quick and easy to make.
