End of palette rules

 Juiced Up - Sold

5" x 7" oil on panel

I can never bear to throw away good oil paint when a painting is complete, so I usually end up creating a small painting from whatever is on the palette.  One of my secret end of palette rules is that I can't add any more of a colour to what's already on the palette, besides white.

I use a split primary palette which consists of cool and warm versions of each primary, as well as an earth tone like burnt sienna or burnt umber as well as titanium white, so it usually gives me a fair choice of colour mixing options.  However that can depend on how much of each paint colour is left over.

I lucked out with a good quantity of pthalo blue, burnt sienna, cadmium red, alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow, so I could mix pretty much anything I wanted and meet the value ranges needed to create this apple.

My other end of palette rule is that the painting must be small, quick to produce (no more than an hour) and loose.  It should be very impressionistic with the colour "bleeding" into other areas.  The challenge for me is that my end of palette paintings are a big transition in size as I come from large (30" x 40") down to 5" x 7" like this one.  I have to remember to get out the small knife and put the trowel away!