Learning to See

Inspiration and practical advice for aspiring realist artists

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Threads February 2020 Studio Workshop: Alla Prima Still Life Paintalong

Wednesday 19th February

6PM UK time (10AM Pacific, 1PM Eastern)

I’m going to be trying something new this month – our first fully-fledged paintalong!

This has kind of started happening already, and a few of you have asked for it, so I’m going to prepare and deliver a workshop organised with this in mind.

We’ll be doing an alla prima still life. Here is the reference photo:

Click here to download.

Here also is version with a grid on it, if you want to use this for drawing out:

Click here to download

I’d advise a panel or oil painting paper about 8 x 10 inches. Prime it with acrylic primer first, if you have it.

We’ll be painting into a couch (a toned layer of oil)so ideally have some linseed oil or similar and a solvent to hand – Gamsol is fine, I’ll be using turps.

Tube colours I’d recommend:

  • titanium white
  • cadmium yellow
  • yellow ochre
  • cobalt blue
  • Cadmium red or quinacridone rose
  • transparent red oxide or burnt sienna
  • raw umber
  • burnt umber
  • ivory black

Brushes:

This is really up to you, but I’d recommend at least two large flats if you have them, synthetic is fine, then a range of hog filberts from medium (half inch) to small (quarter of an inch).

Rather than trying to get all the detail in, we’ll be concentrating on establishing a well balanced start and simplifying the form to create a strong start n one session.

There will be an emphasis on accuracy of colour. If you have at least a Munsell value scale, that will certainly help. I will be supplying Munsell notations live for anyone who has the big book, but you’ll be able to do fne without it.

The seesion will be 1 – 2 hours long. Probably closer to 2 🙂

After the workshop, I’ll provide:

  • Links to practice videos so you can develop the skills involved
  • Hi res photo of my painting as far as it has gone in the time, so that you can compare it to the reference
  • Recording of the live stream

That’s the plan. It will be quite a bit of work to prepare and do, but if it’s successful it could form the template for a lot of the future Threads streams.

Just pop back here when we’re due to start.

Paul

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