The first painting I did at last week’s Observation to Abstraction session was using a very limited palette – just Pthalo Green and Permanent Rose. Both are intense colours but they can produce a reasonable range between them. For this piece, I started with a quick blind sketch using a green, water-soluble crayon and then added my basic washes. At some points, I also glazed over the top, generally waiting until the first coat was fairly dry.

It is a cartoon rendering and doesn’t represent naturalistic colours or values. However, it served as an opportunity to get to know the paints and see how they performed on a larger scale than my test strips so, although quite scrappy, it wasn’t a waste of paint.