Christmas Sketching

First I want to say that I post this with a heavy heart after what happened yesterday in Newtown, CT to all the children. I can't believe this could happen and it leaves me with such sorrow for those families and all of us, what a huge loss. It has touched each of us as we are fixated to our TV's to try and understand why and how this could happen to innocent children. My prayers go out to all the families and the community!

We had our Christmas sketch class and I taught on painting different types of surfaces. I hopefully will have a video available after the holidays for the last few classes. The class was challenging but everyone did really well painting both a reflective shiny surface and an satin surface. It is a great time of the year to challenge yourself to those different textural surfaces. You have to ask yourself what is it about this that makes it look like satin or fur or reflective. It makes you really take time to notice small details that you might have not ever noticed before! Here is my unfinished painting from class I will finish and post it later, oh this Christmas rush is taking all my time, so sorry!

More Oranges continues....

I don't think I mentioned the paper I use, it is La Carte which is a sanded paper and comes in a variety of colors, I love them all. I am now at a point where it is all starting to fall into place. I have had some issues with the shadow colors on the oranges, going back and forth with blues and purples and even dark maroon colors trying to capture the right color and value of the shadow.  Its interesting when you look at the orange in shadow, the pith, right under the rind is lighter looking even though its in shadow. So what happens is my brain tells me it is a lighter color but in reality when I isolate the color it is really dark although lighter than the colors around it. Our brains are always trying to fill in what it thinks or knows its looking at, constantly telling me to just trust me, I know what color that is!

I have found that when I am really struggling to see a particular color I have to isolate it from the surrounding colors. I do this by taking a white piece of paper and using a hole punch I punch some holes. I then place the paper over the color to isolate it so I am able to see the true color. It is sometime shocking what the color actually is or how dark or light the color is. It is also important to see the value, so you can easily change you color photo into a greyscale photo which helps to show you the true value of the color you are trying to figure out.

  I have also started to lay in the shadows under the oranges and the reflected light and orange glow that they are giving off in this intense lighting. As I add the lightest of lights these shadows will be amazing. My goal is to make this orange glow and look translucent in spots, once the darks and lights are in I think this painting will really pop!