LJ and NJ

I want to describe something i found so surprising that it seemed worth it to tell everyone about it.  …  A couple weeks ago i used a very thin burnt sienna wash (layer of paint mixed with mineral spirits) on the lower half of the red barn painting.  I did this because teacher and i decided that it was becoming very distracting to try to paint the barn when there was so much white left on the canvas.  (No:  in my other class, what I’m used to is putting on a wash over the whole canvas at the very beginning of the work– just saying).  Anyhow, that was quite a while ago and that part of the canvas was bone dry when i started today. So — I wanted to begin work on the waving yellow grasses in that bottom half of the photo. I mixed up a combination of yellow ochre, raw umber and a little white to make a nice mix for the grasses.  I mixed three different intensities, varying the white.  Note that there is NO green in the mixture.  I then started to try to paint the grasses.  What happened is what you see below: the yellow/brown mixture, when it hit the burnt-sienna-covered canvas, appeared green.  I double=-checked my mix, and double- triple-cleaned my brushes.  No change.  What happened is what you see in the second photo below: Then what i did was, on advice of teacher, cover the whole rest of the canvas with that same mixture.  When I’d finished that, all of a sudden the grasses appeared yellow again. Pretty something, right?!

Meanwhile, I also did some more work on the barn, which is still a bit “off”.