In a New Light, 30x30 oil painting by Rani Garner
I've been meaning to show you this painting. “In a New Light” is one of my new 30x30 oil paintings for a solo show at Anderson Gallery in October 2021. I thoroughly enjoyed painting it, and it went very well, and the primary reason for this is that I retained control of the color. Consequently, it has good color harmony and didn't take me on the usual roller coaster ride when mixing strong colors for a landscape.
Let me show you how I did this.
Firstly, there is no one way to paint something, and while sometimes it's liberating to just dive into a painting, working instinctively, it's usually a good idea to start by considering how I am going to paint something. Am I going to mix the colors I see and paint directly, or first establish the values and paint in layers? Or I could do more drawing with the paint and build up the lines and brushstrokes slowly, etc. For this painting, my reference photo was nothing special. I liked the early morning light and gold-rimmed clouds, but the color was blah—colorless darks--and there was no focal point. Seeing that the sun was to the left, with the landscape growing increasingly cooler to the right side, I decided I would mix four main colors. I mixed a warm green (based on Sap Green), a cool green (based on Phthalo Green), a warm red (based on Burnt Sienna) and a cool red (based on Quinacridone Magenta). I did do an underpainting first using Burnt Sienna to establish the placement of the landscape's elements.
burnt sienna underpainting before painting the marsh grass
Then I mixed each of these colors into its neighbors, as you can see here:
The warm reds were for the left side, closer to the rising sun, and the warm greens were towards the right. The cool red was for the left sky, moving towards the cool green on the right side of the sky.
Why? Because after years of painting water, I have discovered that when you mix magenta with Phthalo Green, a kind of blue is created, because they are both cool colors. HUH? Red + green = BLUE??? Give it a try and you will see for yourself. This is a very useful mix for painting seascapes, and I was really happy that it worked for the sky in this painting.
I paint every day, and I have to confess that most of the time I mix colors as needed. By the middle of the day, my palette is pretty filled up with not much organization. There are a dozen brushes in use with lots of wiping and cleaning to use one for the next color. By controlling and limiting the palette for a painting, I not only achieve better color harmony; I also waste less paint, brush cleaner, palette space and then have fewer brushes to clean at the end of the day's work. You can try this for yourself and discover interesting color mixtures you might not have thought of otherwise.