Today didn’t go quite how I planned. I was supposed to be at the SUNY Delhi Holiday Bazaar, table dressed and ready, smiling at people as they walked by. But yesterday my car decided nope, and officially tapped out. So instead of panicking (okay, maybe after a little panicking), I let them know I couldn’t make it. No transportation, no bazaar.
Instead, I found myself with an unexpected personal day at home.
And honestly? I looked forward to the day off.
I got my run in, and while I was on the treadmill I watched a Sarah Sedwick tutorial, her loose painting of oranges. I love her loose brushstroke work. She teaches in a way that makes sense.
Inspired, sweaty, and overly ambitious, I headed upstairs after my run, and cut up an orange to set up my own little still life.
One of the gems in her tutorial answered a question I’d been quietly wondering about: she lets her underpainting dry for 10–15 minutes before adding her colors. For some reason, I thought she put down the underpainting and immediately dove right in. So that’s why my colors kept getting muddy… mystery solved.
So that’s what I did, I put down the underpainting and then spent a solid 20 minutes just mixing colors.
And I mean mixing. I had an entire parade of oranges:
“This one is too red.”
“This one is too yellow.”
“Is the chroma really that bright?”
“Why does this look like traffic-cone orange?”
“Okay that’s way too much green.”
Speaking of green, I actually added viridian to my palette to help with desaturation. I also bought some cheap construction paper for future still life setups…an entire rainbow of backgrounds for just a few bucks. For today, though, I picked blue because orange and blue together equal magic… or, more technically, perfect complementary harmony.
Did I see every temperature shift, every color relationship, every subtle nuance correctly? Probably not. But that’s the fun of studying something, you catch more each time. And even if my eye wasn’t perfectly tuned yet, I’m genuinely happy with how this little orange study turned out.
Sometimes a broken-down car reroutes you in the best way. Today it led me back to the easel, back to color mixing, back to learning. Now time to snuggle the pups by the pellet stove.
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