Learning temperature or Grisaille 26-30

25 black and white paintings done and a slight progression into color.  These are #26-30 and are grisaille with the use of ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson to alter the temperature.  It took me a while to get it though.  

First I thought I should just use blue and red.  It felt like painting an abstract and my eye was not ready for the brightness of the blue after so much gray.

Then I learned I should just alter the gray to warm it up or cool it down.  Here's my tentative first attempt.

Getting slightly bolder with the blues.  Already I can understand the blues retreat further back and the reds pull forward.

And I got it!

Then I decided it was time for the speed round.  I did this in 45 minutes, not over thinking and not worrying about making it more than a sketch.  I think I'm going to like color.  

Of course the love of color comes as no surprise to my 4yo Happy Cricket who has spent most of the days in the studio sitting behind me doing her school work or painting or listening to Wind in the Willows audiobook.  To her, black is a non-color that should never be considered in any kind of painting.  She even painted this rainbow for me, with black "but only a little because [I] have to have black in my paintings"