When it’s bluebell season, the colours in woodlands changes yet again. In some places the flowers carpet the woodland floor, influencing the colour of everything you see, almost as if I’m wearing turquoise-tinted glasses. This painting is a compilation of memories of walking and sitting amongst bluebells in different woodlands. The dominant colour used was a phthalo turquoise, a strong, staining colour that easily takes all your mixed colours on your palette if you’re not paying attention. It also teaches you to clean a brush properly because if there’s a little left in a brush, you’ll know about it!
This detail from the painting is about life size. As you get closer and closer to the canvas, the pieces of paint start dissolving into a colourful chaos. It also reveals the different colours in the dark background, created with various glazed layers. The variation in colour showing through is created by working with a big brush and not meticulously covering every millimetre but letting there be ‘missed bits’.
This is absolutely LOVELY, Marion!!!! <3 <3
Marion, I love this piece….almost as much as your sheep. Thanks for sharing the detail and the narrative.
Love this painting. The blue is amazing. Do you mix this blue yourself or do you get it premixed? If you get it premixed, who do you get it from? I would love to experiment with this pigment. The detail is so abstract, it could stand alone as a painting itself. Just goes to show how the small world is an abstract, inspiring, beautiful place. I can’t see the red in the detail in the large painting but I can certainly “feel” the red in the large painting. This red makes this amazing blue vibrate and draw you in and the gray tree trunks give me the impression of looking through a screen at this mysterious place. Love it.
Marion, just one word: EXQUISITE!!!!
Gail, The blue is “turquoise”, a mixture of phthalo blue (PB 15:4) and phthalo green (PG7). (Buy Direct: Acrylics or Oils). It’s a tube I’ve had for ages that I rediscovered tidying up one day. It’s surprisingly dark when used thickly, but mixed with glazing medium does beautiful things to other colours (such as red). Add in a bit of white and you’ve yet more delights.