All change

The beautiful weather continued for more than a week and walking on the coastline has been a real joy – in the low afternoon sun, the calm sea and scattered islands is more reminiscent of the Mediterranean than the Arctic Ocean. We’ve moved house yet again, and by this time next week we should have an indoor internet connection! The physical effort of hauling heavy boxes a few hundred yards up the steep grassy slope has left us exhausted (35 trips in total - about 3 miles). My brain is also burnt out, flitting between fair isle patterns, spread sheets and colour wheels. Whilst repacking boxes I unearthed my colour wheel and experienced a eureka moment. I suddenly understood the difference between hues, tints, tones and shades and worked out that the majority of artwork I admire uses tones from a cool analogous colour palette. Earlier in the week I’d come across an old Andrews Liver Salts Poster with those lovely milky colours and characteristic poster style of the 1930's. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. My wheel revealed that the posters' colours  were tones made from mixing a hue with grey and the limited palette choosen from a few colours next to each other in the colour spectrum. My paint box revealed that I never use those colours in my own artwork and so a trip to the nearest art shop is on the agenda for tomorrow.