Colorful Cactus

 

Many landscape artists start their paintings with intense warm colors (like red, orange, yellow, or pink). They use those vibrant colors to do a transparent wash as the under painting, then they put more realistic colors on top. I don't understand why they do this. I thought this approach destroys our ability to judge color correctly. If we put a color on top of a massive red color, its appearance will be affected by its background. It will shift toward the green since we judge this color relative to the red background.  You can't say my logic was wrong, so for many years I use neutrals (brown or gray) to start my painting. It is safe, but I ended up many boring paintings... I have just woke up recently.   I started this painting with a bloody red wash. I had to overwrite the relative color deception. I like its turned out. It is much more exciting.