Mixing It Up

Last weekend was the second run of my new workshop "Mindful Mixing," at Oregon Art Supply here in Eugene. It's a still life based class, focusing on color and - you guessed it - mixing! I'm a huge fan of the palette knife, and spend a lot of time premixing paint colors before any of it goes on the canvas. 

Above, you can see my demo of our "Stroke Economy" exercise. Paint an apple with 25 brushstrokes! Since a stroke is considered anything that happens between your brush touching the canvas and being lifted up, you can get a lot out of one. The trick is to get the right result from one!

Below are two more exercises. On the top left is a still life of all-white objects painted using black and white. Bottom left is the same still life painted using purple and yellow only - no white. On the right, you see my purple/yellow demo converted to black and white with a photo filter to check the values.