Free Climbing

The weight and vitality of this climbing rose was straining the fence which surrounds this garden in a charming, historic village. I wanted to experiment with color for this studio painting, and in particular feature pure cobalt blue. Cobalt blue is such an expensive paint and is a weak pigment - I found that mixing it with any other color made it lose it's brilliance. My underpainting was a very strong, staining violet which I applied and then wiped out to block in my composition.