So… now I have all the blue under-painting done it’s time to fill in with some actual colour. But what colour?
This is not really a scene in involving fairies, more of a geometric arrangement. Hypothetical, Escher-like fairies. With crackers. So I feel that going too far towards painting them in natural colours will be counter-productive. I am thinking more of painting them basically pale like the ‘Nacreous Fairies‘ two paintings ago. The white, however, was a bit overpowering of the blue under-painting, so I’m painting them with ‘Naples Yellow’ a kind of pale yellowy-browny-buff colour that I use a lot as it makes a good starting point for mixing a flesh tone.
By the same argument, I decided to paint their hair and everything about them the same colour: I am imagining coloured crackers and hats, and a coloured background, so coloured hair could get confusing. I might regret these decisions, they might look like ghost fairies, and then again, it might all come out lovely!
So, first for the Naples Yellow and the colour on the crackers. Sorry, took this photo last night in indecent light (light, that is, which is not decent 😉
For those of you interested to have a go at this yourselves, what I did next was to paint white over the colour of the crackers:
…the reason for this is that paints with a lot of white filler in them I have found to be very good at resisting layers of colour applied on top of them (remember I will wash all this off again soon). Colours that are quite transparent, however, seem to let a lot of colour through them, so this is just a protective layer of white paint, because what I’m going to do next is this:
And this:
…and so on.
This is my cunning plan for the background. In part, because I like the background of the November painting. But this one has go ground, no up, no down etc.
Let me say at this point that I don’t know if it will work! I am typing this post intermittently, while waiting in stages for the different colours to dry. Usually, of course, gouache paint doesn’t take long to dry, but blobs and splashes take a while, and so I keep having to put the painting outside in the nice warm breeze there is today, and hope that no cats walk on it… though frankly it’s probably now gone beyond the stage where a cat paw-print would really do any harm!
…and seeing as I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be left in suspense too 😉
…until the next post…
Art by Nancy Farmer 
You’re so brave….