Sunday, January 27, 2008

Lesson 1: Working with Blues and Browns

Effective paintings can be made with just two tubes of paint. Here we'll use ultramarine blue and burnt sienna - two complementary colors. First make a gradient swatch and notice all the variations of tones you can create.


Try a small study using mainly cool, blue tones with warm, brown contrasts and then try the reverse. Use pure hues for accents.


These grayed tones make me think of a rainy day and it has been raining non-stop here lately. During the worst of the storm we kept an eye on a flicker hunkered down in our walnut tree. He looked so miserable and I'd like to capture the feeling of 'braving a storm' in a painting. Here's a first attempt using the using the blue/brown complementary color scheme.

4 comments:

Mr. Mouse said...

hey there. just wanted to say that this is fantastic. i have been meaning to dabble in watercolors for some time now. so now that i got my first read on what to do, i think i shall go out and buy me some watercolors. hey you should make a blog on drawing hands, and the human face. just a thought.

Viewpoints Gallery said...

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll only be able to get lessons posted once a week as I work out material for my classes.

Anonymous said...

I love this theory - I never thought that you could do so much with just two tubes of paint! Thanks for sharing that!

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