Welcome to the first session of the Autumn Colour Workshop!
The live session will be here on Monday 9th November at 6PM UK time (1PM Eastern, 10AM Pacific).
Just pop back here when we’re due to start. The chat box will appear on the right. The live video stream will be here. Just press play and wait for the session to start.
In this session we’ll be starting off slowly with a careful, simplified value study of our first subject – a single apple with a few leaves.
The key here is the word simplifying. We’re going to be reducing this subject down to the main value groups and trying to ensure that we really nail those values.
What you need
An 8 by 10 inch panel or similar painting surface.
Your value scale mixed up and ready to go before the session starts. Here’s a video on how to do it:
Have some linseed oil and solvent (turps or gamsol), or similar ready to paint a couch (a very thin layer of medium) onto the panel.
You’ll also want to have the pictures below downloaded and ready to view on a screen.
What we’ll be doing
We’ll start by laying a couch in on the panel, then toning it – I’ll be explaining and demonstrating how to do this live in the session.
Then we’ll be adding a grid. It will really help you if you work the same size as the reference photos – 8 by 10 inches – since the grid on your painting will be the same proportion then. If you want to use a ruler to do this THAT IS FINE! There are no marks for making things more difficult 🙂
Once the panel is prepared, we’ll be using the first photo with the grid initially to do a line block in of the subject.
Then we’ll be switching to the pixelated photo to help us nail the main value areas.
We’ll be looking at edge handling too, toward the end of the session.
The third photo is there in case you want to add some detail 🙂
We’ll be using the study you do in this first session as the basis for the second session, when we’ll paint this subject in colour.
It’s up to you whether you want to paint along live. There are advantages and disadvantages to this:
- Advantage: you get to ask me any questions that come up for you as you go along, live.
- Disadvantage: It can be tricky to paint, follow along and keep pace with the demo, and type in the chat all at once!
On balance, I think it’s better to paint along live, since you’ll have time to go through the session again and do another version if you’d like to. More practice is always good!
Reference photos
Right click or CMD-click to download.
