I love the drama of red - red poppies, red roses, red anything! Using my palette knife, I have added a stucco feel to the background by adding color on top of color with the long flat edge, barely skimming the surface. For the reds of the petals, I have mainly used cad red light, with alizarin crimson and even burnt umber in the shadows. Pulling the highlights from edge to base, I've used caucasian skin, cad yellow light, naples yellow and white. I think I mixed a little cad orange in, too. Cad orange is one of those colors that is a "must have" on my palette. It adds energy to a painting, even in the slightest amounts. Not wanting to take the time to reload my greenish umber, I mixed my dark greens with cad yellow and black, which makes a rich, warm green pushing towards the olive. The paint is rather thick today, I was really in the mood for texture! It can be so rewarding to pull that paint on with a knife. But practice makes perfect - the palette knife was very unnatural for me at first. It took a lot of strokes before it felt natural, and a different knife will yield different results each time. It is so important to know your tools - and get lots of painting in. Each painting just gets more and more fun to paint! Painting number 815 in 815 days.
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