Fall Palette by Gail Guirreri-Maslyk, 2018

I always talk about the importance of minimal palette in my work habit. Painting at great speed requires freedom of the colors to work together without fail. Brown mud and ugly grey should be difficult to achieve when painting fast. I always study my composition long enough to decide on three colors to start with. Often I will do some mixing to make sure I can achieve the needed colors and make adjustments before I put anything on the canvas. As I look back over paintings of 25 years I can see the different palette phases. My next phase is well planned and more subtle in color. Painting in muted tones well means having white on the palette early on. White can be non retractable poison infecting pure colors.

A few nights ago I saw a painting in a home of variations on white in grey, yellow and green. All so soft and luxurious. Wandering through some images on my computer I found similar soft palette paintings by Munnings. He was such a master at decisive color to enhance the mood of romantic settings. After studying the paintings I go back and study pigments. With so many combinations to memorize I must decide on the pigments I want to commit to so as not to overwhelm my decisions. My swatch is a starting point for the first canvas. Indanthrone blue, yellow ochre and alizarin crimson with titanium white is enough. I can see adding either Indian yellow or nickel titrate yellow depending on needing a warm or cool yellow in my greens. Should a cool blue be added with a cool yellow, the season of the painting could be changed completely. Alizarin might be too strong out of the tube, but a great black is found with the blue. Yellow ochre will tone down the pinks some if needed too. I may do the underpainting with white in this series rather than straight transparent pigments. Underpainting in ochre, alizarin and white combination will make a subtle backdrop for a fall painting.

As I work with this palette I will write more journals. This fancy new web site allows me to keep track of my ideas and theories easily.