Day four of Painting I

Mixing much mixing of colors. No more guess work of what will brighten and what will grey a  color. The color wheel is our friend dear ones.

We worked on the books and the canister, and vase of our composition. And the pages got thier own treatment as well. The bottom book received cad orange, cerulean blue and yellow ochre. This made a orangey color rather like my copy of "The Nile" by Emil Ludwig. Then the red book got a reddish mixture that was dulled with a bit (tiny) blue. Because red and blue are opposites. To dull green one uses red.To get black we mixed cad yellow and ultramarine and alizarin crimson. This was for the books that were blackish in color. Now for the pages and the canister: we mixed orange, ultramarine blue, aand white. Note to self start with white and orange other wise one uses too much blue and get green. We were then shown how to get our vase looking like a vase(more or less). Using the greyish brownish color of the canister and book pages we added the merest hint of dark blue and put in the shadows. Adding white to this mixture we put in the lighter areas and were show how to drag into the darker color and thereby mix the intermediate shades right onto the canvas. The trick is to clean your brush after each drag! The mysteries are unfolding and i am quite pleased to finally be able to paint( sort of) in oils. Wonder what next class will bring and will I succeed in grasping it?