|
Colorful is
Denise,
Congratulations, your drawing is getting better. The first step in doing skillful painting is putting things in the right place. This we call drawing and working sight size is a good way to train your eye. Try setting up a plaster cast with a consistent and direct light source. You can also work on seeing values and subtle modeling without the distraction of color.
The palette you are using is very hard to control and I would suggest a more traditional palette for flesh painting. Yellow ochre pale, yellow ochre, terra rosa, sinopia (or indian red), raw umber and ivory black will deliver an extraordinary range of human tones that are both beautiful and quite lively. This served artists such as Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Titian and Paxton.
Using thirty colors to paint flesh is like jumping into shark infested waters to learn how to swim. It can be effective but the chances of surviving are slim.
In painting there are rules and then their are truths. Don't confuse the two.
A medium is used if the handling of the paint is not to your liking or to control drying time. It is not a bad thing to use one.
My last point concerns photography. There is a computer term GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). This refers to working from bad reference as well. Another way of putting it is, "you can't make a sow's ear into a silk purse." If you can't see something how can you paint it? Superior realists always work from an abundance and not a shortage of information.
When you attend my Greensboro workshop in June, I will be specifically addressing the issues of modeling form, color mixing and drawing. By the way, I will be leading a one day photography and lighting seminar at the end of this month, in conjunction with the Portrait Society of Atlanta on January 29th. I'll be doing a painting demo the preceding evening.
|