At the moment, I am using colour as the theme for my oil painting classes, and recently the choice was...WHITE. I decided to have white flowers as reference, and headed to Ikea to pick up some lilies, though I was seriously diverted by the gladioli, so bought some of those too. They look rather tremendous at the bottom of my stairs!
 |
| Jug of fakes! |
I wouldn't usually go for fake flowers, but as I wanted students to work from life, this was a good solution as they wouldn't wilt (the flowers, not the students!).
 |
| The lovely finished painting by Julie B |
I started by clamping each stem to the boards on the easels, then moved the lamps around to create as much light and shade as possible. I wanted to have plenty of variation, with only a limited amount of unshaded white. This meant that everyone had lots of opportunity to paint a multitude of different 'whites'.
 |
| Charcoal study and finished painting by Ruth T |
For the first session, all students did a tonal study in grey and white compressed charcoal, on tinted card (apart from Sara, who did a lovely colour pencil artwork instead).
 |
| Gorgeous coloured pencil on tinted card, by Sara C |
Doing a preliminary study gives us the space to understand the subject, in the manner of solving a puzzle, and helps iron out some of the tricky pitfalls, without the added difficulties of dealing in colour.
 |
| A delicious pastel tonal study by LM |
Students had up to three further sessions to complete an oil study of their flower.
 |
| A-M's home set-up showing the lily clamped to her board on the right, with the underpainting on the left. |
 |
| Lovely pastel tonal study by Bronagh B |
 |
| Dramatic tonal study by PC |
 |
| Look at the difference a strong background colour makes to the perceived value of the white petals. Lovely painting by Marie P |
The most dramatic paintings were the ones which had a strong background. This meant that the different tones and shades within the petals looked subtle and pale - when the background was also pale, the petals risked looking overly colourful. Great work, with excellent amounts of suffering in the name of art!!
For info on workshops please email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk
Julie's studio is above the pop-up shop in lovely Comber -
No comments:
Post a Comment