Day V

Day five was exciting. We learned more about color and how to get the effects we want with it. There are tubes of paint in our composition and we learned how to put the under coat for silver in and how to correct compositional faux paux.

To make the under coat for silver, mix orange, cerulean and just a bit of white. This is also good for the shadows and for the inside of the cup and the silver caps for the brushes. If you need to grey out ochre just add blue or red.For the brushes we used yellow and dark blue and orange and a hint of alizarin crimson.

We were able to further develop the bottom book color. It was fun and frustrating. I am still unlearning things from acrylic and I find myself holding my breath trying not to beat the paint from drying out. Time is always a factor when painting in acrylics and it is a luxury to know with oil I have plenty of time.

The book got a treatment of cad red, yellow ochre, ceruelan blue. We worked wet into wet and worked from dark to light. Once that was done we mixed a bit of yellow and orange into the darker mixture and  added a middle tone. We held our brushes at a sideways edge and brushed the color in wiping our brushe with each stroke. Then we added a little more organge, ochre and white( a very little white since white can dull a color). There is a little jot of color under the edge of the book that is stacked on the one we were working and it was amazing what that little lighter stroke did for the book. Finally we added even more yellow and orange and red and tiny bit of white and worked the lightest areas. The book looks like a book, which is all anyone can ask for.

In learning about composition we learned there were four ways to achieve leading someone's eye.

They are:

Brightest color in the composition,

Most detailed area of the composition,

All points and lines lead to the object one wants to focus the eye on,

Lightest source placed next to the darkest source.

I have learned more in five classes than I learned in all my self-learning.