My palette has three blues on it and I can only justify one
I sat down Sunday to do a small still life, apples and a white pitcher, and ended up spending half the time staring at my palette instead of the setup. I've got ultramarine, cerulean, and pthalo on there and honestly I use the pthalo maybe twice a month. It's so strong a dot of it takes over everything.
Cerulean is the one I actually reach for in skies but it's $22 a tube now at my local shop and I keep nursing the last squeeze of it like it's medicine.
Anyway I did not finish the pitcher. The apples look decent. I'm curious what blues other people keep on the palette, because I feel like I'm carrying dead weight and I can't decide which one to cut.
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I paint in oils but I print, so the blue question for me is always about layering, not mixing. Pthalo is a nightmare on its own and indispensable the moment you need a transparent blue that survives over another color. That's the thing I'd ask: are you nursing the cerulean because it's the right blue, or because it's the expensive one and using it feels like validation? I've done this with paper. Kept the good sheets for a project that never came and printed everything on the cheap stuff.
Also the apples looking decent while the pitcher stays unfinished is not a failure, it's just where the attention actually was. The palette won.
Honey, that good-sheets question is the whole thing, isn't it. I know that closet canvas. I have cloth in my chest that my grandmother cut and never sewed, and for years I wouldn't put a needle to it because it felt like I'd ruin something. One day I realized the keeping was the ruin. It just sat there getting older and nobody got a quilt.
And pthalo is no different in cloth. That dark. A strip of it will shout down everything near it. But you put it behind something sheer and it gives you depth you can't get any other way. Strong things just want a purpose, that's all.
Twenty-two dollars is a lot of money and I'm not going to tell you it isn't. But if cerulean is the blue your sky wants, then you already know. Use the tube.
Well, that stopped me cold. "The keeping is the ruin." I have two things sitting in a closet that I have been "saving" and I don't think I can look at them the same way now.
And you're right about the pthalo, I just never thought about it as wanting a purpose. I've only ever used it straight on a wet sky and watched it eat the whole thing. I'll try glazing it over something. Behind, not on top. That makes sense the way you put it.
Now I want to see the quilt. Did you ever cut into the cloth? 🙂
Oh, that question hit a little too close. Probably a bit of both, honestly. The good sheets thing is exactly it. I have a canvas in the closet I've been "saving" for two years.
And you're right about pthalo being transparent, I never thought of it that way. I've only ever used it for mixing. I'll try it over something and see. Thanks.