The second live session will be here on:
Monday 24th January
at
6PM UK time (1PM Eastern, 10AM Pacific check the time in your time zone here)
What we’ll be doing
In this session, we’re going to move onto the “folds” section of the workshop, and with a vengeance!
Our challenge in this session is to paint a single fold as well as we possibly can.
And to do that, we need to understand the form of the fold and how that affects the light.
Light and form are the two most important things that we deal with as realistic painters, and if you want your cloth to really live, it really helps if you can break down how the folds are constructed and how that affects the light.
The big two aspects we need to look really closely at here are values and edges. Value shows us how much light is being reflected from a particular part of our subject, but edges show us the form. I can’t stress this enough – edges are KEY. The two, values and edges, working together can create magic.
And that’s what we’re going to create in this session! The perspective and understanding this session gives you will help you to paint more convincing folds through the rest of our subjects in the workshop – and beyond.
Since the focus is values and edges for this study, we’ll be working in value only. Hopefully you’re already beginning to see how much can be described just with drawing, value and edges.
What you’ll need
As in session one, we’ll be working 8 x 10 inches, but portrait this time, so an ampersand panel of those proportions will be ideal. The reference photo is in these proportions.
Brushes: As well as big enough brushes to lay in large blocks of value (half inch or so) you’ll also need some smaller brushes in order to handle the fine edge control we’ll need. I’d advise having at least one dry synthetic flat for blending, and a couple of smaller synthetic rounds for fine edge handling.
Medium: Linseed oil (refined or cold pressed) and a solvent – we’ll be working into a couch (a thin layer of medium applied to the panel before painting).
Paints:
- Lead or titanium white
- Ivory black
- Raw Umber
Please have the simpe five step value scale mixed before the session starts. Try to make sure that the values you mix are all true neutrals in this case, i.e. they match the Munsell value chips as closely as you can get them.
Click here to watch a video demo of mixing the scale
NOTE: in the video I’m not trying to make my values perfectly neutral, but I’d encourage you to do so for this session. You can do that by varying the proportion of raw umber+white to black+white mixes. ALWAYS make sure you’re mixing the same values together when you’re trying to nail the neutral, so if your’e trying to nail a value 5 neutral, your raw umber+white mix and your ivory black+white mix must both be a value five.
Preparation
I would also strongly suggest that you do the edge handling handling exercise more than once – as many times as you can bear it! – before the session starts. The success of your study will largely depend on how well you can handle edges from hard to very soft.
Reference photos
Click here to download the reference photo.
It will print out 8 x 10 inches if you print it at the same scale as the image, but I’d caution against using a print out for values – just use it for drawing out if you prefer to work from a “hard” copy.