hell's kitchen

This painting was done from a photograph of 3 pots.  In an enthusiastic state, I tried to imagine a palette of colors that would render the three pots realistically and be a peaceful meditation on still life.

I came up with a palette of Indian Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue, Indigo, and Titanium White.

Now, I have much to learn about painting technique, but I do believe that I achieved my goal with this  painting.

Then I read a book which said that I should start out with a monochrome painting with one main color, using black, white and the color's complement to learn the rich range of  tones that could be obtained.  

Okay, I thought.  Let's do things the orthodox way.  I chose a subect, a little town outside Venice, with a very strong range of values.  I chose Gold Ochre as my color with Ivory Black, Titanium White, and Diodoxene Purple as my complement.

I guess I'm not orthodox because the result was horrible.  They say that you should never use black in a mixture with another color - and this is certainly true here.  Black is no color and, adding to another color, deadens the color.  The dark here is a mixture of Gold Ochre, Diodoxene Purple, and Ivory Black.   

I liked the subject, so I decided to do the painting over - again selecting a palette that I thought would present the subject in the best "light" .

The palette here is Quinacridone Gold, Brown Madder, Indigo, and Titanium White.

How I did the dark passage:  An underpainting of gold, a glaze of brown madder, and two glazes of indigo.

This rendering is not perfect because I had to do it twice.  You see, the first time around, I had the under painting, the brown madder glaze and two glazes of indigo and decided to give it a third glaze of indigo - which was too much.  So I went back and painted over the whole area with white (several coats so that it was opaque) and then started over again with the gold underpainting, the madder glaze and two indigo glazes.  Unforunately, all the previous underpaintings have an effect on the texture of the surface, and the sense of mystery - or the luminosity of the dark - is not as effective as it would have been had I not been tempted  to lay on that third indigo glaze.

• I'm better at following my instincts than following directions (so what else is new?).
  
• What looks black in a photograph does not have to be black in a painting - in fact it probably shouldn't be.
• When doing glazes, do a sample on scratch paper or canvas to test the effect.
• Consider all of the above so that you don't have to repaint and thereby damage a passage.