Small Daily Studies

 Painting Demo Sketch

A few years back I participated in the 50 paintings in 50 days show at the 20th Street Gallery in Midtown, for 3 years in a row. I submitted to the show because I wanted to learn to paint small and I did, but I learned so much more than that. As I painted each day I began to simplify the painting, and I noticed that my brush strokes were looser and more direct. I was getting more comfortable with my tools, and most of all I learned to discipline myself to focus on painting regularly. But in addition to that, when I went back to larger paintings, I was able to use the things I learned - things like value, shapes, and color. Over all it was very beneficial in a lot of ways.

This week in my beginning oil painting classes at the School of Light and Color in Old Fair Oaks, California, we have begun a new series of studies. I decided last week that this would be a great way for new painters to practice painting small while at the same time learning about - you guessed it - simple value shapes, shadow and light, color mixing and color harmony. My hope is that this will improve every body's confidence because when you paint one small painting in each class, you will have to put together the steps that I have been teaching and still have time to finish a painting while the inspiration is fresh.

So I asked everybody to bring in a small object that they felt inspired to paint, and we put a light on it right next to their easels. Then we used our view finders to crop and compose some beautiful shapes and shadows and light. Not much time to get over-involved, just paint. Everybody did a great job today.

Next week we will paint the same object with white and black paint only. I will teach them to mix a value scale and work from that. After Thanksgiving week, we will do a complementary color scheme using only two complements and black and white. Maybe after that do it again using analogous colors or something like that, very fun!