Category: Learn to Paint

“If you have twenty colours sitting next to you, every problem can appear to have the same solution: Reach for another tube.

Take those options away, and you have to become more inventive. You start paying much closer attention to value … to how much paint thickness can affect colour. … the surface underneath. …

Rather than asking, What colour is that object? You start asking, what does this area need in relation to everything around it?”

Will Kemp, “The Materials List Is the End of the Story“

It’s no secret that my favourite colour-mixing combination is orange and blue. That I enjoy the brightness of cadmium orange and the dark depths of Prussian blue. Mix them to create an array of browns and greys. Change the blue or orange pigment, and you change the results.

Amongst the new example pieces I’ve been painting for my workshop at Higham Hall later this month is a new favourite colours chart.

If you compare it to the old one below, which dates back easily half a dozen years, you’ll see a couple of additions and fewer blues.

I do still have an assortment of blues to hand, but find I reach for Prussian or phthalo turquoise first.

There’s now diox purple, for dark shadows and interesting mixing/glazing with yellows. I also like it for covering unresolved paintings to reuse a canvas.

And there’s a red because I can’t get to a satisfactory red sandstone colour without it, so I need it for this coastline.

I do still prefer magenta for mixing rather than a red, because I find it leans into purples rather than my rapidly heading into browns. And I do enjoy magenta as a starting colour (coloured ground).

I’ve also added Payne’s grey ink because I use it a lot now, though rarely as a mixing colour.

“Knowing that foraged plant colours are short-lived, an artist would normally avoid using them in anything but ephemera. The last thing you want is to sell an art piece only for it to fade within months of being put up on a wall. But whether this evanescence should be considered a drawback or a quality, is a matter of perspective. Personally, it got me meditating on our expectations of artwork, the received wisdom that once finished it should never change. What if the work was intended to change with time? What if we accept that change and mortality are valuable aspects of reality? With a proper understanding of organic colours, I could work their fugitive quality into a piece, and insure that however much they fade, the work remains an art piece (as opposed to a piece that will deteriorate beyond repair…)

My first venture into this concept was my piece Loss.

Joumana Medlej, “Creating with the Land“

Joumana’s artworks “Loss” and “Blessings Everlasting“, where some colours fade through light and time whilst other elements* remain unchanged, captivate my heart and my imagination. The exploration of impermanence, the creation and knowledge of colours, the patience required for the cutting of the paper layers, words I can’t read. Designed to change, without controlling how or how fast it will.
^{(*the layers of cut paper, gold, mineral pigments)}

As I try to adapt to life without the in-house art critic, I hope for some things to fade and for permanence of others. I find myself wondering where I put that watercolour set of Sennelier natural pigments that has fugitive (non-lightfast) colours; the fear that the colours would fade stopped me from using it , but now I see possibilities in this. Colours that change, fade, and last as a representation of memory, grief, life.