Creating colour by deconstructing grey

I had a wonderful opportunity to get outdoors and paint today as I’ve been based for a few days down at the coast. The weather is great – warm and just a bit breezy, but not so much that your easel is blown away, and the sea is tussled by small waves and white breakers.

So I packed my oil painting gear and headed off to the clifftops to try and capture the sea, surf, rocks and cliffs that always make for a great subject. But when I got there I discovered that even though the sun was out, the colour of the cliffs was just a muted grey-brown.

Now, the more I paint the more I discover that I am a colour man. I like colour. I struggle to paint muted pictures. Perhaps this is because I live in Spain on the Mediterranean coast where the light is bright and the colours (generally) glow. Perhaps it is just my style. Whatever it is I love colour and want my paintings to be colourful.

So, what to do about those dull cliffs?

All greys are composed of primary colours mixed together to one degree or another, so why not deconstruct the grey into its primary parts and paint with those? That’s what I chose to do, using ultramarine blue, pyrrole red and yellow ochre as my three main primaries.

Here I’m about half way through with much of the painting blocked in. The foreground is still to go. I’m painting on a warm red underpainting which shows through in patches and especially at the moment in the foreground.

The finished painting.

Can you see how I have upped the colour? You may say that it is “unrealistic”, but it makes for a much more interesting painting, and these colours really are there although hidden in the grey. I’ve just set them free!

The finished painting

It’s a beautiful day – water mixable oil on panel 27 X 22cm

I hope you have found this of interest. Please comment and/or like this post. I’d really appreciate that!

#colourmixing #enpleinair #oilpainting #paintingtips