Painting as Problem Solving

Winter light, 11 x 14 inches, oil/canvas

When I stand in front of a painting, I will think about different things as I react to what I am seeing.  I may find the work poetic, vibrant, disturbing, melancholy....

When I stand in front of my canvas and I have to determine my colour palette,my thinking is quite different.  What I think about is how to translate the complexity of the colours that I see into pigments and how to get them all to work together. I have a difficult problem that I have to solve.  This is the challenge of any  and every painting. 

study, 8 x 10 inches, oil/canvas

A good way to tackle this problem is to do a colour study.  It is like a rough draft or  the calculations one makes on a scrap of paper.   Part 2 of the Winter landscape is a colour study that takes a look at how solve the colour problem issue.
You can see it in high definition at You Tube.