Me And My Paint Brush

I noticed something when I was working on my most recent painting. I haven't been mixing paint on my palette as much as I have been layering it. Why does this matter? It's the reason my grays aren't always as neutral as I want and mostly end up being bluer. What I noticed today is that I start with an area of blue on the palette and mixed it up into my brush, next up is red, and lastly yellow. This is what I normally do, although I do loop back to to adjust the color, as needed. That means my brush is pre-loaded with more blue, which comes out when I paint. I also noticed that I mostly look at the pool of color on the palette versus what is on my brush. That's been changing changing a bit as I stop to consider values and check them against the gray scale and value finder tool. It's easier to do that with the brush. Today when I did that, I noticed this thin line of blue paint sitting above the paint on the lower part of the brush.

After two years, today, it suddenly occurred to me that it's a better to focus on the end of your paint brush rather than the color you mixed on your palette since I am painting with the brush. 

This is why I keep this blog. I find this stuff fascinating and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface. This blog gives me a place to document this journey and still keep my friends. If I went into this level of detail with most people I know, I fear that they would start to slowly back away whenever they saw me!