Patience

As an alla prima painter, I am not used to waiting for paint to dry. I mix directly from my paint tubes and go for it. 

However, there are some pieces which require patience and a different approach. For instance, the brilliance of the pinks on the throat of a calliope hummingbird is a good example. If you paint those feathers titanium white and once dry glaze over them with brilliant rosy reds, the pink will be striking. That iridescence is almost impossible to achieve directly from the tube.

This painting is another example. I will be glazing the two foreground left zebra and am starting differently on the painting's middle zebra and the one on its right. I would like the "white" of these two zebra to have the strongest moonlit hue. Their whites are painted using just Titanium White. Once that is dry, I will glaze over the white of the zebra with a blue-green color.

I can see the finished color in my mind, but I will have to be patient to get it.

 

I am tempted to adjust the color of the grass but will wait until the rest of the painting is done to see what kind (or if) a color shift is needed.                       Patience.