I'm trying to juggle two publishing briefs with my 'Summerlands' work. The briefs take priority, but I'm managing to sneak in an hour or so for myself. Yesterday I almost wrecked a painting by not testing out my colours beforehand, which is the danger of rushing things. I thought I'd give the 'Tin Mice' a fairground/rock candy feel, by using pink, yellow and green. Here I've added a gamboge yellow band to Mother Mouse. It looks too garish and I instantly swashed it down with clean water and soaked up as much of it as possible.
I tried a deeper pink next - this was better, though in this instance it is too dense and again, I mopped it until it faded to a respectable pale rose.
Next mistake was to paint the rivets with indigo. It looked - wrong. By now I realised that the colour scheme was going to be extremely limited...
So I made them - pink. Again.
Once it was painted up, I had my usual panic...will it be any good? I don't like it! But I got stuck in with the pencil work, which always brings the colours up, and managed to rescue what was almost a bit of a horlicks.
Tin Mice