Colour Mixing

While I'm ever so slowly building up the colour again on the clothe with successive glazes of cadmium red, I'm stopping to let the other areas of the painting catch up. First the leaves. The chroma has been too intense a green for several weeks. I tried several different mixtures to dull the chroma. Adding cadmium orange, and later burnt umber, didn't work for me. In theory, the compliment of red in the burnt umber or a close complimentary in orange should have done the trick, but only made them "hotter". So I think mixed a range of neutral grey values and added each to the range of greens on my largest leaf -- in equal measure... And now the greens are cooling off.

This week I'm going to tackle the background. It only has a first thin layer of dead colour on it. The correct recipe for the background green is ivory black + yellow ocre + some burnt umber... We debated at the school whether I should paint over the outline of the bottle completely and then paint the bottle on top. Bottle, being transclucent, would have some background green showing throw... But it in the real life set up, it's a different green (blue green, mostly vermillion) and the right edge of it is very prominent. So the consensus is to paint the bottle as I see it at the same time as the background and then blend the edges in.  One edge I need to deal with a.s.a.p is the place where the clothe recedes into the background. I have yet to turn it away from the front and blend it into the green wall.