Radiant colors

I ordered some new oil paints from Dick Blick and as a special gift for my order, I received a four pack of Gamblin's Radiant oil colors. Awesome surprise! The sample pack includes Radiant Green, Radiant Blue, Radiant Magenta, and Radiant Yellow. This photo is a little blurry, but aren't they beautiful?


I decided to try them out during class last night. Our instructor, Kim, had made the observation that my colors tend towards the cool side due to my heavy reliance on white to lighten the value of a color as opposed to mixing it with another lighter color on the color wheel. She said that radiant colors have the advantage of being a pure hue eliminating one less step when mixing colors with white. I spent most of the class working on this painting, a Mini Manet from a book of his floral paintings that Frank loaned me.


I think it did come out on the cool side, but I enjoyed using hits of the pure radiant colors here and there.

During the last few minutes of class, I tried another, warmer painting from Manet's collection. I think the quick, decisions I made during this painting are interesting and I quite like how it came out.


Now-the question came up during critique, how would you frame these?