This is my first of hopefully many posts this year. In fact, one of my resolutions is to paint 100 paintings outdoors. This will mean getting out there and getting a painting done approximately twice a week. I started plein air painting just this summer...August perhaps. I'm still experimenting with my palette. I've always only had 3 colors and white on the palette to work with. I started off with yellow ochre, transparent red earth, and ultramarine blue. More recently I decided to use cadmium yellow, transparent oxide red, and ultramarine blue. Today I decided to use the primaries in cadmium yellow, cadmium red, and ultramarine. This was really tough not having an earth pigment on the palette instead of the cadmium red. I might perhaps use today's primary palette and throw the transparent oxide red back on there also. I don't know what limited palette will be my go-to palette quite yet. What I do know is, I will probably rely on a very limited palette at all times because I would rather create color harmony, a mood, and a tonal look than that of a colorist painting. I know what I like in landscape paintings of others and scenes that I view in nature and can visualize my own visions of these down on canvas. It's a matter of getting there with practice.
Today's painting was done in the comfort of my truck as it was extremely windy and there were actually midwest tornadoes between yesterday's warmup and today's temperature drop. The threat of a tornado was gone when I painted this but the winds would've taken my easel.
