Autumn Colours Workshop Session Two

The second session of the Autumn Colours Workshop will be here on:

Monday 16th November at 6PM Uk time (10am Pacific, 1PM Eastern)

Just pop back here when we’re due to start. The chat box will appear on the right (or possibly at the bottom of the page if you’re on a tablet).

The live video stream will be here. Just press play and wait for the session to start.

What we’ll be doing

In this session, we’ll be building on the start we made with value last week and completing a colour study of our subject.

We’ll still be working in very simplified terms and concentrating on:

• Broad, accurate areas of colour
• Edges (of course!)
• Relating the colours closely to the values we established in the first study
• Expressive brush strokes – mostly in the background and ground

You have two choices for how to approach this one:

One: If your study from last week is touch dry (it should be) then you’ll be able to paint the colour study directly on top of it.

Doing it this way will make it easier to relate the values of the colours you’re mixing to the values in your study.

The possible down-side is that you’ll have to paint opaquely throughout to get the colours accurate. If the neutrals from the value study show through, they will affect the final colour.

Two: Paint a new study from scratch, using the values from your first study as a guide for your colour mixing.

You’ll probably get a nicer study this way, but it might be a little more difficult to match the values. I’ll be domenstrating two ways you can do this live though.

Firstly, you can put dabs of your mixes directly on the study from the previous week.

Secondly, if you want to keep your previous value study clean, you can hold a little swatch with your colour mixes on up against the study to check the value.

If you’re going to take this approach, make sure you have a palette knife and preferably a small rectangle (about 1 x 2 inches) of clear acetate so that you can paint little swatches of your mixes on to it and hold them against your study to check the value.

Materials:

The following tube paints

• titanium white
• bright yellow lake
• possibly cad yellow although we might not need it
• yellow ochre
• naphthol red (or cad red light)
• green gold
• transparent red oxide
• raw umber
• ivory black
• phthalo green

You’ll also need linseed oil or a similar medium and, if you’re doing a new study from scratch and not painting over the last one, some solvent like turps or gamsol

An 8 x 10 panel (or similar) if you’re doing a new study

A palette knife

A clean palette

What to prepare before we start

Please have your panel ready with the grid and your drawing blocked in before we start the session.

If you’re doing a new study, prepare the panel as we did for the first session: Paint on a thin layer of linseed oil mixed with a little solvent. Paint into this a light-value mix of titanium white, raw umber and ivory black, then wipe most of it off.

If you’re painting over your study from last week, rub a very thin layer of linseed oil (or olegel or similar if you have it). You can use your thumb or a make-up sponge for this, but don’t paint it on – make sure the layer is very thin, but covers the whole study.

Reference photos

Here also is the gridded photo from last week for the drawing block in.