The focus for the last four classes was 'The Planning of a Painting'. We spent two classes just planning the painting and the third week we actually painted but the catch was we had to paint larger than 16x20. This is my finished demo painting 18x24. The first photo shows what we did during the first week. We planned the composition and did value studies for the painting. I have developed a planning worksheet to make this process easier.
After we did our value studies in a thumb nail version we painted a small monochromatic study. The idea was to concentrate only on the values and not to worry about color at this point. That would be the next class!
The second week of class we focused on color. We did small color studies each one using a different color scheme. It was fun to explore the way color changed the mood and feeling of the painting.
After spending three weeks with our image, we were ready to be finished with it. I emphasized that the planning of a painting doesn't usually take 3 weeks! I usually spend anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour on a painting plan....but by breaking down the steps we now could see just how easy it can be. For the last class of the session, we were now ready to have some fun. So I asked everyone to put their reference photo away and paint our scene from our imaginations. I did this as the demo but I ended up making some changes after class. I decided to turn the yellow flowers into daisies! I really enjoyed this session and look forward to the next 4 weeks when we will explore Underpaintings!
