Private & Semi-Private Lessons

As I have a comment, asking where the poster can get lessons on monochromatic painting using other colours, I have put a link to a book on the subject of Monochromatic painting. It is not usual to use other colours than those I have demonstrated with.

An all blue, all purple, all red, etc paining can be very wearying on the eye in my opinion but by all means try it. All you have to do is substitute for another colour from those i demonstrate with and understand the need to mute some of those colours and not use them in their full colour intensity.  Badly handes using strong colour and I think you would come up with vulgar, not art,

Monochromatic Painting in tones of yellow.

Oil Paints used were,

Titanium White

Cadmium yellow light

Yellow Ochre

Raw Sienna

Raw Umber

Black

Five tones were premixed

Light being mostly Titanium white with the barest hint of yellow

Yellow Ochre and a little white to produce a medium light tone.

Raw Sienna and a small amount of white and Raw Umber and a little more white to produce a mid tone.

Raw Umber used alone as the med dark tone

Raw Umber and black, to produce a dark tone.

Painting was broken down into its four stages.

1/Plan

 Our subject a tree at the entrance to Brachina Gorge, Flinders Ranges, South Australia, as taken from the print by Kathy Shell of this work WITH the permission of the artist for the purpose of this class to copy it. Note; Do not copy artists work without permission as that is breaking copyright.

The decision was made to paint in tonal impressionist style using tones of yellow.

2/ Block in. 

As with the previous light and shade lessons completed in black and white and tones of grey we began by working from light to dark until the basic block in was completed.

Painting as loose as we could, with as big a brush, as we could for as long as we could and resisting the urge to detail at this stage.  Once the block in was complete a coffee break was taken in the garden where we looked at the works of skilled tonal impressionist artists and looked at and talked about nature.

3/ Refine. 

I explained that when we paint landscapes on location the refining might include removing mosquitoes, dirt, and grass seeds from the work.   In the case of in studio work it is mostly picking up errors obvious once a break from the work has been taken and filling in missed parts of the canvas.

4/ Detail. 

Drawing the foreground or the focal point of the painting into sharper focus by increasing the contrast of light and shade in this area from the less in focus, distance.   Remembering that you do not have to place every branch every leaf, in the work just capture the essence of the subject you are painting and know when to stop. 

This was a 2 and a half hour beginner’s oil painting lesson.