Posted> On this beautiful morning we were out for a walk to shoot and sketch at Sweetwater park.  

A park "created to improve the water quality of wetlands in Paynes Prairie and the Floridan Aquifer."

While I was trying to get a sketch Michelle captured this beautiful moment of the early morning sky. Thanks to Michelle Nagri for allowing me to reference her picture for this oil sticks and knife 8 x 10 on cradled panel.

Idea: 1/31/21>Reference a photo by Michelle of the morning  sky at sweetwater park.The planed process was to  Lay down pink's first, darker pink at the bottom, cover the panel to the top this is a thin layer.

Try/> Get progressive darker toward the top. Add yellow and white to sun area, starting wide and adding more white as it get closer blend with surrounding pink gray

Palette= Portland gray, iron violet, magenta, lemon yellow, ultra, Prussian,

what I actually did>

Used Shiva paint sticks. I decided this would speed up the process by getting the drawing done with the oil sticks. This was going well and as planned. However, when I picked up the oval palette knife and discovered I could blend out the strokes to get the smooth transition I was after for the under painting, I just kept going. Throughout the process I kept intending to mix and apply paint with the knife but the sticks made it so much faster.  Not having to stop and mix paint after every few strokes saved a bunch of time. Not only because I didn't have to mix the color but because I didn't have to decide on the color and when it was mixed correctly. The color was being mixed on the panel as I rubbed the stick into the surface.

What i learned is having all, or at least most, of the colors premixed or as tube colors really speeds it up.

Also its hard or impossible to build up the paint with the sticks. Because the sticks are hard, the next color wants to dig into the layer below. The blending stick and the palette knife helped with this a lot but at a certain point the knife or brush has to apply the paint wet in wet to build up the layers.

I did use the knife to mix and apply the orange in the lower right and some blue in the clouds. Started by laying down some white around the edges to cover up the black acrylic paint from the gessoing process. I used the colorless blending stick for the first time ever (never knew what it was for). It seems to be made out mostly wax. It most definitely helped to blend out the strokes and mix the colors.  I used a blue-gray ,called ice blue, in with the ultra marine and alizarin crimson to get a mauve gray.

I used the sticks for most of the painting back and forth between blending with adding color I used the oval palette knife to blend. Also used the colorless blender stick which appears to be mostly wax for the first time. It seems to work well. This was totally unexpected because I figured the painting would have a crayon sketch quality that blending eliminated. Because of this I continue to use the sticks for as long as they would build up paint. Which in this case was pretty much the whole thing. Even though this was intended to be the under painting over which I would put thick impasto I really liked the feeling I got and didn't want to loose it by going further.  Maybe I'll do another version with lots of texture.