Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Grays of Winter - oil

Hidden Creek, oil, 8x10

Many artists love to paint because they love color. However, learning to handle grays is a key skill.

With today's class, I demonstrated from a reference photo that had lots of gray and very little color, but with a little "push" from Photoshop, I was able to very slightly exaggerate what little color was there. And it wasn't so much about figuring out the color that was in the photo, but determining if it should be a warm or a cool. This takes the pressure off of trying to mix an exact color.

Most of my demo was spent talking through the block-in portion (in which I simplified the busy trees into one large shape, plus the snow on the ground, the sky area at the top, and the three creek shapes) and the warms and cools I mixed using only ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, yellow ochre, cadmium lemon yellow, titanium white, and small amounts of cadmium red light and cobalt blue. Sorry, I forgot to get progression photos, but here's where I left the painting at end of the demo portion of the class:


After the class, I took my time fine tuning and adding the small details.

reference photo


I'm holding class again tomorrow, this time in pastel. Same topic, different snow scene.




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