Hey, I’m back with another 30 day challenge. I’ve been wanting to paint landscapes again for a while so that’s where this challenge will focus. In addition to landscapes, I’m also limiting my palette to the Sennelier Test Pack which includes Titanium White, Lemon Yellow, Alizarin Crimson (substituted for Permanent Alizarin Crimson), Ultramarine Blue, and Ivory Black. I quit using Alizarin Crimson years ago because it is a fugitive color and I wasn’t about to start using it again so I bought a tube of Permanent Alizarin to substitute.

Since I don’t typically use any of these primaries, the learning curve was frustrating. The first three paintings I did, I struggled with mixing an opaque enough warm color. This is mainly due to the fact that some of the oil separated out of the yellow in the tube and there was just too much oil in my yellow. On day four I squeezed out a lot more paint and was able to get a drier paint. This really threw me for a loop because I’m used to painting with Cadmium yellows which are very opaque. Alizarin Crimson is also a transparent color by nature so I was having a hard time with that too. My warm mixes are still a bit on the transparent side, but I’m managing better now.

The Ultramarine was a lot easier to work with, but it is a very dry paint. It’s almost difficult to get out of the tube it’s so dry. It does help beef up some of the mixes, so this is less of an issue for me. These issues could be due to the fact that I bought these paints a few years ago in anticipation of this limited palette challenge. Obviously, I intended on doing this challenge earlier, but life. You know.

Overall, I think week one was a success. This blog on the other hand is a tad late, but you can’t win em all. Keep an eye out for the next week’s collection of paintings and follow me on instagram for daily updates @amber.honour.