The session will be here on Thursday 17th September at 6PM UK time (1PM Eastern, 10AM Pacific).
Just pop here a little before we’re due to start, and you’ll see the video here. Press play and wait for the session to start.
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If you don’t see the video, just refresh the page and it should appear.
Topic: Composition
I think we have an exceptionally beautiful subject for this session.
We’ll be looking at how to frame it in a composition in different ways, a few approaches to trying out compositions before we’ve even put brush to panel and I’ll be covering some conceptual background to composition and how you can approach it.
Well also be doing two live wipe outs of very different approaches to laying out this subject in different formats and with different spacings – with and without the vase
I’ll be doing a little more talking at the start as I demonstrate some aspects of composition with slides and live with the camera, then we’ll do some quick composition studies.
Here are three reference photos. We’ll be using the first value one without the value scale.
Materials
All you’ll need for this session are:
- Two panels about 10 x 8 inches (or two pieces of oil paper cut to that size, or whatever else you want to paint on). The aspect ratio isn’t set in stone and is up to you – the main lesson of this session is fitting a subject to an aspect ratio in different ways, so other sizes are fine – you’ll just get different results to mine. That might actually be a good thing!
- Burnt umber (and possibly white)
- Linseed oil or something similar to use for a couch
- Turps or gamsol or similar solvent – not 100% necessary, but it can be useful when wiping out to cut right back to the panel surface, especially if you’re re-suing your panel – see note below
- A range of brushes, mostly flats
- Something to wipe out with – a rag or kitchen roll work great
NOTE: If you want to save panels, you can just use one panel and wipe it down completely after the first study. If you do that you’lll need to re-apply the couch for the second one.
The Subject
Here are the photos.
I’ve added one with the scale and a full colour one so that you can use them for other practice if you want, or for a finished painting.
See you soon!