DEMONSTRATION Zebra

STAGE ONE

I began with a light pencil sketch of the composition and did a few test patches of my planned colour palette. I used a neutral-toned grey palette, which I find makes it much easier to judge the colours and values before applying them to a coloured surface. In the same say, if I had been painting directly onto white canvas I would have used a white palette.

I started with the areas in shadow and with the darkest values first. This is more from habit than any rule. The darker and purer the paint, the thinner the layer, so for me it makes sense to work up to the lightest, and thickest applications of paint last. Also, having finished the light areas, I sometimes need to re-evaluate the values of the shadows, and if they have been painted first, they will be drier, and so easier to glaze over.

I mixed my darkest dark, which was the deepest value point of the black stripes. I planned to make them a high chroma magenta, but I needed to adapt because, having squeezed too hard on an insanely expensive tube of manganese violet, I ended up with a large dollop on the palette. There was no way of getting it back into the tube, so violet was going to feature more heavily in the palette scheme! I also mixed a mid-range dark and set to with the dark stripes. In any form, you want to mix at least three values of that colour; dark, mid-range and highlight being the bare minimum. I painted little test squares of paint on the canvas to show me the values of each colour. It is often helpful to take a photo of the work and convert it to greyscale on your phone, using a monochrome filter, to help you check your tonal values