Renaissance * A Red Carnation Oil Painting

Renaissance, 10x20, Oil on Canvas, Sold

Softly lit and gently splayed carnations.  So many layers, so much to consider.  On the other hand less is more. 

If you like RED, and I do, here it is.  I wondered if I was going to be in over my head when I first started painting carnations but once I got into a groove they all started to come together.  (BTW, the study for this painting was posted here: http://loritwiggs.blogspot.com/2017/06/red-carnation-study-in-chiaroscuro.html   )   Here is the study image:  

Red Carnation Study

So from study to gallery painting I am learning more about technique and my personal spin on it.  I've found this principle to be true:

Darker colors recede when warm and come forward when cool

Lighter colors recede when cool and come forward when warm.

But rules were meant  to be broken from time to time.   It's helpful, though,  to have that little tidbit when something isnt working the way you think it should.  

For instance, the interior of the blooms are deep and I want them to recede.  If I mix Ultramarine blue with Crimson I will get a cool dark relative to Ultramarine mixed with red deep or especially red light which is uber warm.  Now I painted this a few months ago so I cant swear to what colors I used but I'm just sayin'.  So to get a deep interior to the blooms I'm inclined to use a warm red mixed with UB.  If Crimison/UB works then fine but if it doesnt give me the depth I want then I go warmer.  See?

This principle is useful for backgrounds and foregrounds alike but opposite (get it?).  If I want a dark background I find it is a bit of a tightrope walk because my darker colors are generally cool, ie: UB, Black.  To warm them I generally use lighter colors, ie: reds, yellows - which in turn lightens the color and I will lose the bold dark background to some degree.  I use a lot of Transparent Oxide Red which is pretty dark but transparent sooo...  I add some UB then warm it with either yellow and go greenish or maybe some red light.  Either way I want to keep the chroma down.  Dont want to saturate my background...  :(

Foregrounds are the opposite.  I want more chroma - but not so much that it competes with my subject.  AAAAnnnnd I want it to come forward.  So in the light areas I will go warmer, generally and relative to the surrounding color.  In the darker areas, like the corners I may try to brighten it with a little cooler color - Cooler, that is, relative to it's surrounding color.  It's all relative..

Good Grief.  I just read what I wrote and sound like a babbling know it all but it's just me thinking out loud on screen..  It's probably not as complex as I make it sound.  I suppose for some people it's all intuitive.  But I like to think about things like that.  After all, some of the best advice I got was from a workshop instructor  Robert Rohm who said to me:

" Ask yourself, is it lighter, darker, warmer, cooler?  "

That really sums it up.