day #223 - Colorizing

Today's piece has been an experiment (aren't they all?). I decided to try the "underpainting" technique, something that I only recently found out! To my disbelief, the habit of laying tha values first before the colors is not something only photoshop artists use, but has been around since forever. So I created a monochromatic painting of mere red values. It was quite beautiful. I hesitated attempting to add color since I didn't know whether it would work out, but eventually I took the plunge: I started with the sky and the background mountains. I wasn't too happy with the tampering but it was already late to go back. I moved on to adding color to the ground, which worked amazingly well and fast since you don't need to be too precise! Apparently it's easier and nicer to "colorize" the complex ground than the minimalistic sky. Perhaps again, red plus blue (purple), and red plus green (gray) are not compatible. Perhaps I had used too much water already in the sky and mountains and this didn't allow the colors to come together. I don't know.
Long story short, while the sky and mountain-range don't satisfy me, there are so many parts in this painting that I like, that I am overall happy with the result. In the future I might want to improve my usage of white. While it is transparent, it still sticks out too much. Probably I'm being too lazy using unmixed white and I would had been better off if I took the time to mix white with the base-color before applying it. Sue me.
Overall, I'm satisfied with today's work. Not only did I start painting very late and overcame the boredom of starting something new (and the fear too - since it's been quite some days now that I haven't started any new complete piece and I have the habit of doubting myself), but I also got to try a very useful technique. Also, in the process I did a piece with very nice light and I feel I've started to understand how to create light translucency and vibrancy.