Today is one of those days where – if someone asked about the weather – you’d say “nasty” (that’s “nee-asty”). I ask myself: “Why is it that I live in New Hampshire?” Hmmmmm…

And then I sit down to do my art and the weather is perfect: it gives me no reason to want to be outside AND the light could not be better for seeing color. On sunny days and at night – that’s not so easy. But a certain kind of drizzly, foggy day. Great.

And this is why. If you look close, you can see – in this light – that in the green, there is some red (pink), and in the red(pink) there is some green. One of the great tricks of the old master painters was to underlie the opposite color in their oil paintings so that it caused the surface color to be particularly vibrant. So, when I am dyeing my colors, I use this idea. For my whole large piece, there is underlying red. Since most of the piece is green, it is working on that opposition. It also serves to unify the piece.

I use a lot of grey to offset the colors – and the grey itself has red under it. Because of that, it can lean towards purple. So when I was adding in the yellow-green, it tended to look even yellower because it’s playing against the purple tint that, in some areas, the grey assumes. And I use purple as well. Just less of it.

Oh dear. I went back to show you this effect and the light had dimmed. So you can just get the gist of what I’m saying.

Light is everything for color.

Loving that nasty weather.