Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Portrait class demo

In the portrait class we are moving into limited color starting next week. Here's my demo piece, a value study, painted thinly since it's an underpainting. I was working from a sketch I did of Sophie last year. I used Gamblin's Asphaltum and my Titanium white warmed with a smidge of cad yellow light (I have this premixed in a tube--I bought a pint size can of white paint because it's cheaper, and found I far prefer using tubes. I had some empty tubes, so I filled them). Next Monday I'll demonstrate how to proceed into limited color on top of this painting. Sometimes I find that I like the value study so much that I don't want to do anything more to it. There's such a simplicity to a good value study--it's easy on the eyes. However, as a learning tool, it's a good exercise to establish values first and then add color while conforming to the already-established values. As Richard Schmid says, "Value does all the work, and color gets all the credit." Here's the sketch.

1 comment:

frasmac said...

What does "limited color" mean>