Do you ever look at your surroundings and think: “These colors are magical! I wish I could translate them into a painting!” Two of the biggest challenges when painting from life can be depicting colors and values naturalistically. Much of painting is not only mixing an accurate color on your palette, but training your eye to judge relationships between colors and values successfully.
In this 4 week course, we’ll sharpen your perceptual abilities, exploring color theory through painting the nude figure. We’ll dive into the incredible world of hue, value, and chroma, as well as palette organization, leveling up your painting game. We will guide you as you practice judging color relationships on the model and translating these onto your canvas.
Experience with life drawing is highly recommended for this class, though new/beginner painters are welcome. Each session will include a demo as well as individual critiques.
Lesson 1 – Drawing with Paint
We’ll observe the model and draw the pose with paint. I will guide you through measuring techniques and how best to capture the gesture and proportion.
Lesson 2 – Color Theory & Painting
We will review the triad of hue, value, and chroma, and how to juggle these as you mix on your palette. As we observe the model and talk about the importance of the whole picture, comparing hue, value and chroma in different areas.
Lesson 3 – Painting
We’ll dive right into painting! As we get more down on the canvas, we’ll have more context, continually judging the relationships in our painting to those on the model, and adjusting our painting towards more accurate colors as we go.
Lesson 4 – Finishing the Painting
We’ll continue to paint and paint to the finish line so you can walk away with a painting you are proud of!
Material Requirements
- Canvas: 11×14, 9×12, 12×16 or similar size (I recommend pre-primed linen panels from Blick, like Centurion or Blick brand)
- A variety of sizes of synthetic round brushes: size 2, 4, 6 and 8. And a couple small synthetic round brushes, size 0 or 1. (Any brand works, I use Blick Scholastic Wonder White round brushes)
- Linseed oil
- Small bottle of gamsol
- Solvent cup (Blick sells metal double cups that clip onto your palette)
- Palette of your preference (wood, plastic, disposable paper palette, anything is fine. I use a wood palette)
- Recommended paint pigments (any brand will do, I use Michael Harding, Gamblin, and Old Holland):
- Cadmium Red Medium
- Burnt Sienna or Transparent Oxide Red
- Alizarin Crimson
- Yellow Ochre
- Cadmium Yellow Medium
- Ultramarine Blue
- Titanium White or Lead White (Titanium if you prefer non-toxic)
- Raw Umber
- Van Dyke Brown
- Ivory Black
- Burnt Umber (optional)
- Cadmium Yellow Light (optional)
- Brush cleaning soap (I use a bar of clothing detergent from any corner store)
Important Information
- We are a screen-free environment!
- Students are expected to focus on their work for the duration of the session. We play low classical music during class.
- Discussions of student work with the teacher take place during class.
