My daughter sometimes wears a cute hairstyle where she twists her long hair into two buns at the nape of her neck. She sat for a friend and I in this sweet pose. This is my warm up for a painting marathon I am planning for January, 30 paintings in 30 days, stay tuned.....
I painted this still life with two lessons in mind. Tomorrow, in my alla prima still life class, we will be focusing on paint application and how thin and thick paint help with the illusion of light and shadow. The other lesson is for a workshop I will be teaching in Ann Arbor this weekend where the focus is on using a limited palette to create harmony. The idea of a limited palette is not to mix exactly what you see but to create the realationships that the restrited palette allows. Any three colors that represent the primary colors can be used. In this case I used cerulean blue, permanant rose, and lemon yellow as well as titanium white. The use of these particular colors does not allow for a really bright orange but the mixture of peramanant rose and lemon yellow will look very orange when surrounded by all the other colors mixed from those three colors. Because the colors are in all the mixtures and relate to each other they always look harmonious. A limited palette is the best way to learn color mixing.
