Tips on how to do colour note studies
EXERCISES
You might nd it easier to rst copy some paintings but only allow yourself to say the painting in six brushstrokes of di erent colours.
Look at your landscape in front of you and do the same when choosing what to paint.
Tone your panel with a very thin layer of Cadmium
Red Light.
Do the drawing in a neutral tone, perhaps Ultramarine Blue and a little red.
Block in the darks of the value pattern lightly with the same colours. Work lightly with your value patterns so that you feel comfortable that it works both in terms of design and values. Now mix the paints on your palette to create the patterns. I would suggest spending time on your palette rather than on the canvas, creating nice buttery mounds of colour.
In these two landscape studies I have kept my colour palette really simple.
Firstly I toned my canvas very lightly with Cadmium Red, this allows a soft warmth to come through and balances well with the blues and greens we see in a landscape.
In this rst one I have created three colour mixes which are also three separate values. Each mix has Ultramarine Blue in it which helps keep the painting harmonised:
1 The sky and light of the water: Titanium White and Ultramarine Blue
2 The shadow pattern: Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Red Light
3 The lights of the trees and re ection in the water: Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Yellow Light
In the more developed painting, I have still kept my shadow colours as red and blue and my sky is simple, but I have graded the value in the sky and added a little yellow to soften. It is in the lights on the trees that I have varied the greens. I have still only used Ultramarine Blue but have used Cadmium Red Light and both Cadmium Yellow Light and Yellow Ochre. I have also used my round brush to create some more accents.
In this painting I have kept to the same composition in the colour note study, and added extra accents and a little red buoy, which I pulled over from the right of the picture plane as it added a fun colour note.