I think I probably write the words “Raw Umber” more than any others on this blog, perhaps in close competition with “Foundation White” because I use so much of this lovely, versatile brown and rich, solid white in my work these days. Thank you so much to M. Graham for the Raw Umber and to Michael Harding for the White.
Today I’m working on the landscape, building trees on the horizon line with rags and a quarter of an inch egbert (a slightly long filbert). I don’t recall painting grass before, except that little bit in the foreground of the Traveler, and I spent a little time thinking about how best to lay down the deep layers of long grass and making it recede toward the background. I’m heading more towards an un-mown meadow than the grazed grass I was thinking of earlier, partly because I want to emphasize fertility and partly because I want to enjoy the challenge of painting a convincing swath of long grass with all the complexities of stems and leaves growing over each other.
