I had a very productive day….maybe 1/3 with business and intenet and bills and 2/3 painting. I met with a client for a commission and worked on three studies as well as one mid-sized painting. These are both 36 x 18 inch studies for a larger 2 to 4 ratio paintings. I have another pair and hope to post there progress tomorrow.
36. x 54 inch Stillness redux on the horizontal
my next layer will create a strong sequence, and it solves the transition problem from between the sky and the grasses by working both ends at once — pulling the sky down softens the top edge of the grass mass, while the teal-to-magenta-to-orange layering inside the grasses builds the same temperature journey internally, so the eye gets that shift twice, at different scales. That kind of nested repetition is usually what makes a passage feel inevitable rather than designed.
The alizarin glaze over cad orange is the move I'd be most excited to see. Cad orange is already about as saturated and opaque as you can get straight from the tube — glazing a transparent red like alizarin over it won't just deepen the hue, it'll give you that internal glow because light is passing through the crimson layer and bouncing back off the opaque orange underneath rather than just sitting on the surface. That's real luminosity, not just darker orange. It should read as combustion rather than pigment, especially with the water underneath already carrying quieter echoes of that same red.
Given the magenta is going in as a middle layer between teal and orange, I am thinking of it as a thin glaze too, or laying it in more opaque so it holds its own weight in the grass structure before the crimson glaze goes on top? I will just have to see what happens.