Plein Air with Randall Sexton at the Landgrove Inn, Vermont

Randall Sexton talking us through his paint palette.











Another week of plein air painting! This time under instruction with Randy Sexton.
For this workshop I stayed at the Landgrove Inn in Vermont, the hotel hosting this course.

Though it was completely optional, I decided to use Randy's recommended palette to start with.

He recommends the following colors:

Ivory Black
Ultramarine Blue
Viridian Hue (Holbein Brand)
Transparent Red Oxide. (Rembrandt)…(or Burnt Sienna)
Quinacridone Red …………………… (or Alizarin Crimson)
Permanent Red Medium (Rembrandt).. (or  Cad Red Light, Cadmium Scarlet)
Golden Ochre …………………………(or yellow ochre pale)
Cadmium Yellow Light………………  (or Cadmium Lemon)
Titanium White


I opted for:

Ivory Black
Ultramarine Blue
Viridian Hue
Burnt Sienna
Quinacridone Red (I detest Alizarin Crimson)
Cad Red Light
Yellow ochre
Cadmium Yellow Light
and Cadmium Lemon

This palette leans more 'natural' than I am used to.
I liked the Viridian green which makes a beautiful sky blue when mixed with Ultramarine and white.
I also liked the quinacridone red, similar to the quinacridone magenta I usually use.

As the week went on I added my usual phthalo blue which I missed and used both cad yellow and cad lemon as I found I couldn't mix all the green I wanted without them.

I noticed looking back at the paintings I did this week that they all ended up leaning towards 'brown', which goes to show that the palette of colors you start with is going to have a big influence on the final outcome of your painting.

The Red Mill at Weston, Vermont.

A progress shot.

unusually for me I decided to start with a ground, using Burnt Sienna. Still not completely sure of the benefit of painting in a ground with my style of painting, but I guess this worked.

Sunflowers.













Randy giving a demo in front of the sunflower field.

 

Barn with red roof

This is another one of those paintings that I kind of liked while I was painting it, but once I brought it inside, the colours all looked completely different. One of those learning curves with plein air painting I guess.