Working with a Limited Palette

This past month I have been working with two very lovely new students who decided they were ready to learn to paint. They both came in with very little experience and a great attitude. They are both very talented and have come to the time in their lives in which they can spend time doing what they love to do.

We spent four full days working together over a four week period. Before we moved from value studies to using a full palette of color, we started the first color exercise with a very limited palette of white, burnt sienna and a couple of the blues.

This is a great way to get your eyes to look for and find the subtle variations of value and temperature. Even though you won't be able to paint pink, you can lean toward a warm pinkish value that may resemble pink for the flowers, etc.  Because in my demo I was forced to use basically blue and brown, I chose a very cool bluish color for the lime to increase the contrast of color and temperature between the flowers and lime. It will really get you to focus on those things that we need to learn to see all the time, but many times we don't because we can be lazy.

Don't be lazy, train your eyes to see as an artist!

Still Life/City Life - 30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 5""

"Green Apple Set Up"  SOLD
Oil on Panel    6 x 6"

I set this up for my Oil Painting Class at Patris Studio in Sacramento last year. I loved the complementary colors and decided it would be a good exercise. The mirrored vase was my favorite part to paint.

This artwork is available for sale at the Daily Paintworks Website.

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/randy-blasquez/green-apple-setup/165504

Day Three - Yvette's Kitchen

Yvette's Kitchen
Oil on Linen Panel    8 x 6"

I am having fun with this theme, "All Things French". It has taken me back to France last summer to the Chateau we stayed in for the workshop with Ovanes Berberian. Our host's took such good care of us and treated us like their personal guests for two weeks.

One early morning I snapped this picture of the light coming through the kitchen window. It was very inspiring.

Colorful Washes

Last Tuesday in my intermediate painting class we started a larger piece from a live set up using oranges and grapes. This is an example of what the under paintings look like after washing in the transparent color. We are using pure color and a non-toxic varnish for this effect. 

This is another technique that will help us stay in the abstract stage longer in the hopes that we will not over-work the piece. I find it very challenging and also very exciting. 

Of course we all sketched our notans to establish the dark and light patterns and shapes before we began. We will need to rely on this plan of action to keep control of the values. Very important. 

This set up is mostly medium values so we designed our sketches with dominant use of medium values. A successful painting will have a dominant value, whether it is dark, medium or light. A secondary value is also important as well and a small portion of the third value. 

Next week we will come back and finish our works using more opaque paint with the goal of allowing some of the beautiful transparent wash to show through. Another goal is to use texture - impasto - while allowing the thinner washed in areas to be visible.
I'll post the results after Tuesdays class...

Color Mixing Exercise

A couple of weeks ago in my beginning oil painting classes at SLC we learned more about mixing color. Most everybody struggles in the beginning to get their mixing skills to a point where they can easily mix a value and color for the painting they are working on. This usually comes with just lot's and lot's of painting, but you can do a few color mixing exercises to help you learn.
This exercise is one of the many simple tools out there to get you started. In some art schools you do this kind of exercise using many colors, for weeks and weeks, before you even begin to paint. We used the everyday paint tube colors that are out on our palette, starting with the warm and moving around to the neutrals. You can do it any way you like. Just begin at the top with white, then, using your first color (yellow) paint the block along the top in the same order and along the left side. The idea is to meet the color in the middle, then add white. Continue with the next color, only this time and on all of the following colors, you will be mixing the color next in line, going across and down first. Then again mix the colors down the left side with the ones along the top, only this time you add white to the mix. You will find that the lower colors at the diagonal line from the starting point and below will be your tints and above that pure color mixes.
After a while you will really start to enjoy the process and look forward to what the next tube color will do when mixed with the next.
You will find yourself getting to the value and color you are looking for faster the next time you paint. Try it! **If you paint your graph on a piece of loose canvas you can roll it up after it dries and easily carry it with you to class.

Painting With Friends

Allison's Red Shoes

This past Saturday I invited myself to join my friend Allison Carlos as she was instructing a wonderful group of ladies for a one day workshop. She had set up a beautiful table top with a couple pairs of her shoes and some fruit. I am blessed to have her as a friend and she is an amazing  painter. She made a wonderful Italian meal for lunch also. Had a great time. 

When we spend a lot of time in our studio alone, there is nothing better than to join a group of painters. It is the best of both worlds. Wonderful group, wonderful painting time and great food!!

We are planning to take a few days next Spring and teach a workshop up in Lake Tahoe. Can't wait.

Check out this piece on the FASO art contest if you want to "like".

FASO Art Contest

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!

Small to Large Paintings

Twice a month on Tuesdays I am teaching an intermediate oil painting class. I was recruited into coming back to the Capital Art Center at S12 Studios owned by Patris Miller. Last January I left this location to teach beginning oil painting at the School of Light and Color in Fair Oaks.
Some students had been studying with me for years, and wanted me to come back. My friend Renee White made it easy for me. I'm so glad she did, it is a wonderful talented group. Twice a month is about all I can fit in but I'm loving it. We are having a good time right now. Last time we met we painted a small study and next week we will be paint a larger painting. Or, starting a larger painting.
I started out with a scene from Italy in an old village with people walking with their umbrella's. I've been wanting to paint people walking in a street scene for years.Since then I've changed my mind because the photo I was attracted to was not my own, and I thought about all the Paris photos I took a couple of years ago. Wonderful street scenes. I've looked at them over and over and until now had not had a vision for a painting. But after painting the Italian scene in a small study version, it came to me and I went to my Paris photos. I found lots of possibilities...and I don't have to paint umbrellas and rain to get the reflections I want if I use the photos from twilight that I took. The light at that time of day in Paris is amazing!!!

I have other photos with the red awnings and lights so I've decided to add those in.So, now the real challenge, to make it work in a very large format.
I'll keep you posted....
S12 Studios at 1200 S. Street, Sacramento

Today's Assignment

Last night and this morning in my beginning oil painting class at the School of Light and Color we painted melons.......
This class had a chance to practice their angles and proportions in the sketch and then learned some about the light on a dark surface. Also it was a good lesson in changing values in light and shadow within the red of the melons and also the rind.
I'm so blessed to have these students!

Sunflowers Finish.....

Sunflowers by Randy Blasquez
Oil on Linen  16x20"

Sunflowers II  by Randy Blasquez
Oil on Linen    16x20"

I made just a few adjustments on the sunflower paintings from last week. I used a photo reference because my poor sunflowers didn't make it. Because they were painted from life I was able to throw in the few finishing touches without loosing the fresh feel. At least that is what I hope.
I started painting still life paintings when I started to teach at the Capital Art Center in Sacramento because I didn't want my beginnger students at the time to get stuck copying from photos. It's now been about four years and I've learned to love the whole process. Painting still lifes from life is a great way to grow as a painter. By mastering the still life you will be ready to paint anything!

Color Mixing &Value Workshop This Week

These past couple of weeks we have been learning about color and value in the beginning oil painting classes at the School of Light and Color.

I was surprised and delighted that these students were more than willing to use their class time to make charts. I have a wonderful group of students both on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday mornings at the school. These students want to do the work in order to learn. I know it's tough to come into a class as a beginner, especially when we feel that everybody else knows more than we do. But if you can take that risk  and show up, you find out that we are all students, and eventually we figure out that it is a lifetime journey and not a quick study. I love it when one of the gals or guys fall in love with the process, and after getting through the initial stunning fact that it isn't as easy as they thought, become willing to take on the challenge. It is so exciting to see that look on their faces as they light up with an "Aha" moment. 

Anyway, back to the exercises. We drew some one inch squares and put the complements on either side. It is surprising what you can learn by doing simple exercises like mixing complementary colors to make beautiful grays. We mixed the a little of one complement into the other, then a little more, then half and half. It was also interesting to begin to mix white into these mixes where the beautiful grays began to emerge.

We talked about the importance of using grays in your painting, and that it is also important to use value to state a predominant - middle and little value design in your paintings.

Then we made value charts using color, first using black and white to light and darken, and the other using analogous (colors next to our main color on the color wheel) colors to keep as much chroma (rich color) in our mixes as possible.

We talked how to use value changes to turn a form and how value and color are dependent on what you are comparing it to. We squinted to see our values.

After that we made a value scale in black and white, then found paint colors from the tube and matched the value on the scale. After using tube color, we used mixes and found the value using the same scale.

I believe these exercises are invaluable....because we actually learn from DOING. It's all fine to read about this stuff in the art books and magazines, but we will miss the connection if you don't actually do the work. Also, we will learn more from making mistakes than if we don't make mistakes. So we were freed up to make them!

My hope is that when these students are painting their next painting they will reach for a color/value on the palette, and not just think in color alone. They will begin to see value and color all around them. It is not easy but I'm hoping that they will begin to group smaller shapes into larger value shapes, and then begin to design a painting using these concepts. It will take time, and we can only learn so much at a time, so sometime in the next 6 months we probably do this all over again.