Different blues but all very harmonious Alan nothing clashes. This is a very fresh painting, I found your demo very interesting to read. Robert’s comment is interesting too, as I have also found different artists have their own ways of working…. Some say never use black it is dead! Then again I read that Shirley Trevena always adds black. I also read another bit from somewhere that you should the same blue for sky and sea? Not so I think.

This article prompts many reflections - we should of course not expect all artists to take the same route to the ends they choose. And yet, perhaps we sort of do .... After reading Alan's article, I read another from the Artist, published in 2013; and I've just been watching the painter Charles Evans, on YouTube. Both had different takes on points Alan raises. The 2013 article recommends (or anyway, the artist used) very small, fine brushes: Alan recommends large brushes - with which I agree, for what it's worth. Charles tells us that the blue used in the sky should always be the same blue used throughout the painting: Alan uses a mixture of blues, two very similar in composition (Cobalt and Cerulean) and has also used Pthalo Blue for his major cloud formation: there's a Blue-Black in there, too - in the painting, not necessarily in the sky. Of course it would be naive to claim that one way was right, the other wrong. The writer who used very small brushes went for an extreme of fine detail, which Alan does not. Nor do I, normally, and I don't use very small brushes to achieve it when I do. But I confess that I have recently taken Charles' advice to heart, and used only one blue in recent paintings .... why, after 50 years at this business, I should be influenced by even so fine a painter as Charles Evans to make a major change to my way of working, I don't know. Easily pushed about, I suppose! But it's always important to remember that the things that you're liable to read in the Bible, it ain't necessarily so: so I shall jolly well use different blues in my next painting, Charles (and I remember the late Adrian Hill saying the same as Charles, I think); if it feels appropriate at the time, anyway - I'm not really going to do it just to prove a point. And thank you Alan - you've shown that rules are guidelines on the whole: some are essential, but some are optional, and open to opinion and differing judgement.