One has emerged above all else while painting in the gallery this week: "What are the nickels for?"The wicked short of it is that they keep my brushes from rolling off the glass palette I use. The long version is that I often paint in color grids. Either light to dark (think grey clouds) or color feilds (think of a sunset and the transition from blue up high to a red just above the horizon). Once I have these colors mixed, I assign a brush to each. Because I start in one spot and mix to another, the brush comes back a different shade, even though the core of it contains a specific color. It is easy to misplace a brush and assign it to a new color, making muddy colors or worse in the process, but the nickels help me out. Each brush has a specific tape on it's handle (tan masking, blue painters, black electricians, or none at all). Each color or shade has nickels underneath with the same color system, so I just match the tape on the brush to the tape on the nickels. This way my colors stay clean and sharp.
This palette is from "ul 86 (murder the night)." Here I am using the nickels to differentiate the greys used in the middle ground, with the remnants of the sky scheme to the left. Thanks to the iPhone, they all look black. Do not adjust your screen. Ditto for image on the webcam and the web page. But trust me, they are really greys made from the tube colors on the long glass piece at the very top of the table.
-jb.
