Red HOT !

Having challenged a fellow Wednesday painter to try painting with knives, she chose to use her never-tried oils while I stayed with my trusty acrylics.  We had fun !  I was able to warn her that knife painting takes (relatively) HUGE amounts of paint, especially compared to her usual watercolours.  I had brought along a knife-painted seascape of mine to serve as inspiration, along with a book with a couple of pages about painting with knives.  (The written word is always reassuring.)  Neither of us used the example, but I guess it did inspire us, anyway !  Inspiration does not equal duplication.....  

Red HOT ! is actually my second painting of the day; I do not know why I chose to present it first.  Something to do with the lure of all that red ?  It started out to be red flowers, just to use the big blob of crimson paint that I had left.  The addition of some "leaves" rather killed the flowers, while calling out for some sky of some sort.  The darkness of the ultramarine blue begged for some dark green-brown to balance it, then that demanded that the blue be considerably lighter.  Bossy thing, eh ?  At that point it made sense to throw in the remaining orangey-yellow, and stop right there.  I am not accustomed to being pushed about by inanimate objects--that is supposedly my job.