A Peek Inside the Sketchbook...

Practicing painting poppies on sketch paper, before braving The Canvas...

This is what happens when you ( I ) paint at night.  In artificial, overhead, dim light.  I was going for orangey-red, and ended up with pinkish orangey red.  How the..??

I could have sworn there was no pink on my paint palette, which in this case was a sheet of waxed paper, since this was meant to be kind of a creative Brain Dump, and not a "real" painting.  There.  Was.  No.  Pink...anywhere.  There were two shades of green, some red, some orange, some yellow, some "lamp black"...no pink.  I am betting that, somehow, a dab of the titanium white, which I used with a pinprick of yellow to achieve a softer green (are you following me?), sneaked over and mated with some of the crimson.

My take-away?  Never seriously paint in anything but bright natural light.

Or buy an expensive Ott floor light.  (Lots of paint-by-nighters swear by them...)

Problem is, I am a paint-by-nighter.  My Muse loves sunset.  Well, my Muse can be a workhorse and a driver, and once she gets me going earlier in the morning or day, she doesn't want to quit just because the pretty light has sunk in the western sky.

Good thing this was just practice, on sketch paper...

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