Probably ripe (cranberry)

I think it’s finished. Unless I have sudden thoughts to the contrary.

It was a long meditation to decide what color would work with that bit of muddy background that I started with. Below are photos from the beginning up till the one above. All that cranberry at first looked too brilliant to make a good partner to the mud, but in the end toning it down seems to have worked.

OK, so does this look like mud or what?

Sky Pads 22 with the first pass of brushwork over the poured background.

The right side of this version shows the next layer of paint. The left side still needs another layer.

So I guess some of you may be wondering how I toned it down. It was not a likely color combination, but since I only have 12 colors on my palette it’s pretty easy to intuit what combination might do the trick (once I’ve decided which direction to go, that is). In this case, I mixed the tiniest bit of phthalo blue into mars red and used that mix in various states of transparency to lay over the original magenta.

The one oddball colored pad in the center is there on purpose. It was different from its companions in the source photograph and I liked the fact that it lent a bit of curiosity and variety to the painting. I used the same color mix for it as for the rest of the painting, but with the proportions reversed–mostly phthalo blue with a bit of mars red.

I’ve spent a few decades playing around with all the combinations my 12 colors can produce. It’s nothing I invented. It just happened that the classes I took for years with my mentor were done with a color system he recommended. The paints and the mixing system were the product of a company in Australia that stopped being available in the USA years ago and I don’t think the company exists any longer. Most of the paints were toxic! Fortunately I’ve been able to locate safer oil paints over the years. I really like the fact that I only need to purchase 12 colors to make just about any other color I could possibly want! Keeps my palette a lot neater too.