Hi Everyone! I just wanted to announce that my new tutorial DVD on painting the portrait is now available from Bella Muse Productions. You can purchase a physical DVD or if you prefer you can download it.
In this 6 hour tutorial I cover every step of my typical process from the initial underdrawing to final glazes. My palette is visible on the screen while I’m painting, so you can see what I’m mixing. Of course, I discuss my colors and other factors that go into my color mixes. I hope you’ll be pleased with it. I don’t hide anything.
If you buy now you can save about $50 off the normal purchase price (NOTE: This deal is now expired). Click HERE to purchase.
Also — my 2017 workshop schedule is now available. I’ll be in Europe several times as well as on both coasts of the US. View my schedule HERE.
I want to introduce to you what I consider an absolutely indispensable source of color knowledge for the realist painter: HueValueChroma.com. All of you who have asked me about color really need to visit this site and get this information into your artistic thought processes. It’s going to be a little rough going for some who shy away from technical language. It’s also going to challenge some of the conventional color “wisdom” that has been taught in art schools for years. I personally find the information fascinating and VERY USEFUL.
This site is not going to give you recipes for perfect skin tones or how to paint silver, but it will give you a grasp of light and it’s relationship to how we see color. It will give you a vocabulary and some key knowledge about what you are seeing in nature and how to apply it to painting. So check it out. If it seems a little hard to grasp at first, stay with it and give it a chance. Some of you are going to find this the very thing you have been looking for. Color was really an enigma for me until I was taught some similar information by a great mentor Douglas Flynt. Color is definitely still a challenge for me but it is not the elusive ghost it once was. It’s still up to me to continue my studies in color and experiment. Having the knowledge presented here puts my experiments into a context. I hope HueValueChroma will give you more control over your color choices as it has me.
In this video I’m simply illustrating how to make the color charts as explained in the book Alla Prima by Richard Schmid. This exercise will not teach you color theory or how to see color, but it will teach you what your colors can do in terms of mixing. You will have to invest some time and materials but what you will learn makes it all well worth it.
I’m using my chosen palette of colors, of course. You need not feel that you have to use my palette. In his book Richard Schmid is using a slightly different palette. His choice of colors works for him. The colors I use work for me and they can do virtually anything I want to do in the way of mixing color for my particular expression.
My palette consists of:
Titanium white
Cadmium Yellow
Yellow Ochre
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red Light
Terra Rosa
Transparent Red Oxide
Raw Umber
Ivory Black
Quinacridone Violet
Ultramarine Blue
Pthalocyanine Green
By the way, if you don’t have Alla Prima you should. There is a new expanded version of the book available entitled Alla Prima II.
DG Paints 