Featured Painting: Georgia Farmhouse 11″x14″ oil
I’ve been teaching several workshops in the past few weeks. Some helpful hints have come to mind to get your painting off on the right track.
- To avoid mixing too much white into your paints, collect some paint swatches with the correct color. For instance, let’s use cadmium yellow light. If you add to much white to the paint, you will lose the vibrancy of the color. Choose a yellow paint swatch showing the lightest you can mix, before losing that vibrancy. Keep the paint chip on you to refer to.
- Pick a paint color in your palette that is in the middle of the value scale, such as yellow ocher. Put a sample on your palette. All colors in the light will need to be lighter. All colors in shadow will be darker.
- When you start your painting, as a reference put down your brighter, most vibrant color, your lightest and your darkest. All other colors will be in between your lightest and darkest. And all your colors will be less vibrant than the purest color you put on your canvas.
- When you lay in your darks, don’t go into them again. This is something I see over and over. And, something I had trouble with for a long time.
These are some of the tricks that I have used. You may have some other tricks that you use. Let us know what they might be.
Keep putting miles on your brush,
Helpful hints to improve your #paintings besides miles on the brush
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Becky Joy
These are some interesting tips, Becky. I like “Pick a paint color in your palette that is in the middle of the value scale, such as yellow ocher. Put a sample on your palette. All colors in the light will need to be lighter. All colors in shadow will be darker.” You could also create an imprimatura on the canvas (or board) with your middle value color to help judge each color as you add it to the canvas (or board).
When you talk about paint swatches, do you mean like the kind you get from Home Depot or do you mean making your own paint swatches?
Keep up the insightful posts!
-John VanHouten
Yes, you could use an imprimatura on the canvas. I like to paint on white canvas myself and I often mix piles of color on the palette, so it works well for me to have the value on the palette. It just helps to have something to compare.
You could make your own swatches, but I had picked some up at Home Depot and carried them with me when I was painting outdoors.
Thanks John for the comment, appreciate it.
Thank you Becky, these suggestions are important to me and I will try every one.
Thank you Lorraine for your comment. I hope it all helps yo