Apricot & Cherries

This morning was the last day of our Pencil Portraits in the Park class, and it was sad and fun and productive. Hopefully our teacher will offer it again. As we are outdoors and all vaccinated, most of us go maskless. In the classroom, two hours of wearing masks would not be fun.

After class, a trip to the store and then home for lunch, a nap, afternoon coffee, and continuing the repeating of my following along with Lena Rivo in her “Color Mastery Essentials” class. For this study, she wants the student to see how things are done – give an overview to the novice – but as I have already a bit of experience, I followed, paused the video, painted, backtracked, and so on.

My study is not particularly elegant or well done, but the experience is what was important. I know more about color mixing, but the lessons also mentioned mixing the gouache directly on the paper, painting the main subjects first (guess what they were!), doing the shadows, and then painting the negative space – the background – around them. From there, refinement, such as stems, fixing shapes, etc. I decided to add some prints to the tablecloth in colors I had left on my palette, and rather like the way it pulled everything together a bit.

To be continued . . .