Alan's oil demo

Under Tips and Techniques, there are several articles and demonstrations, and of course one of the more interesting is by Alan Bickley (taken from an article of his in  The Artist).  I've made a comment on it on that page, but would just take up one point here which I think worth making, bearing in mind more people will probably see it. Being a YouTube addict - anything from painting in all media, to history documentaries, old films - and cleaning out ear wax (it's addictive, really) - I've watched several videos by Charles Evans among others.  He usually works in water-based media, but I imagine he'd say the same of oil paint; he argued that you should only use one blue in a landscape painting - i.e. that the blue you use to mix other colours should be the same as the one you use in the sky. Alan, however, introduced Pthalo Blue to his sky, and also had Blue-Black on his palette (which I imagine wasn't also used in the sky, though could have been): i.e. Pthalo, plus Cobalt (genuine), plus Cerulean (doubtless ditto). Had he been using student quality colours, he would indeed have used the same basic blue with all of these, since Cobalt Blue (Hue) and Cerulean (Hue) are both usually based on a very reduced Pthalo, with the addition usually of other hues: hence the huge price difference.  Genuine Cobalt and Cerulean are however very different to Pthalo.  And with all due respect to Charles Evans -- I don't think Alan's  painting, in this case or any others, looks even slightly unnatural - as Charles suggests it might. Given I had restricted myself to Ultramarine in my last painting, and am not very happy with it in consequence, I think Alan has re-converted me to using a range of blues (and other colours): I'm all for colour harmony, but not for blandness.  I'll post my all-Ultramarine shortly, with which I have another issue: I'm not at all sure that Cadmium Yellow is ever a good colour to use un-mixed - I did, and wished I hadn't.  Still: I can always work on it again: or even just paint it again with a different palette.