A new painting session

I've been doing this work since 1972 and I typically begin at 8 a.m. and work until noon. I like to blog as a break from the process.

These days the weather has improved so that a bit of plain air painting is possible. Unlike other artists, I see no particular virtue in painting-out-of-doors and I do hate dragging along equipment. I notice that amateur painters (and there are 10,000 of them here every summer) always have a surfeit of fancy do-dads. I have two reasons for abandoning the studio now and again: the need to wander, and the possibility of talking with strangers. Lunenburg is hardly a Group of Seven locale. Wherever I am, the painting always begins with a very rough sketch on stretched canvas
and the establishment of the dark values using a mixture of French Ultramarine Blue and either Turkey Burnt Umber or Italian Raw Sienna (that's how they used to label these colours). I use Sienna where the painting leans toward the warm side of the spectrum and Umber where the painting will end with cool values.