Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Crow, Oil Workshop Students, Art tip #8

" Still Life with Iron Crow "
20"x24"
Oil
Private Collection
Vickie & Carol with their beautiful color studies in oil
This past week has been fun having two very enthusiastic students. I felt more like a coach than a teacher. Vickie and Carol both have intuitive color and design sense. Vickie has been painting for some time, mostly using photo reference. During this workshop she worked only from life using a basic palette and learned how much more color there is to see than what a photo shows. Carol is a beginner who naturally applies lots of paint. Usually its hard to get beginners to load their brushes. Most want to conserve paint and the end results are flat and lifeless. It's called painting for a reason... don't be afraid to use lots of paint.
Tip #8: Put plenty of paint out at the beginning of a paint session. Nothing breaks your flow like running out of a color and having to get more or worse (especially when painting outdoors) to make-do with some other color or mixture just 'cause its on your palette. I teach a basic palette of 7 colors plus white, black and three value grays to dull color with.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Great tip, Jennifer! I love "it's called painting for a reason!" I just started using a couple of gray values with every painting, and am amazed at the versatility it gives you. Thanks for sharing busy painty lady!!!
pughugs from Texas...

Jennifer Bellinger said...

Thanks Nancy. I'm glad my tips are helping your own painting process. Remember to choose or adjust the gray value to match the value of the color you are dulling. When you dull with the compliment of a color it will change the value, too. Like yellow..to dull with a complement you use violet which is a very dark color. Using a light value gray gets you dull fast and without changing the yellows value. Yellow is one color that can go brighter when white is added..go figure! Visual phenomena! At some point I want to talk more about premixing your colors before actually painting.

Unknown said...

love the crow..
must have found you thru & old post
mona & the girls

Jennifer Bellinger said...

Thanks, Mona. I painted a study for this larger work on site. I wish I hadn't sold it. My brother owns this one. I miss it, too. There are those paintings that really speak to the soul. This one does for me.