Craig Nelson’s, “A Solid Start in Oil Painting”
Stop staring at blank canvas and start painting. With Craig Nelson’s simple method for still life, you’ll overcome your hesitation and kick start your career in oil. You’ll develop foundation skills, create a path for improvement, and even save money at the art store.
Learn from master teacher Craig Nelson. With this instructional video workshop, A Solid Start in Oil Painting: Still Life, you follow the logical and intuitive steps of a nationally recognized master. You learn the sequence, design, placement, shapes, dimension, light, and color to master the art of portrait drawing.
You’ll build an affordable kit as Craig walks you through essential materials and navigates the pitfalls of store displays. You’ll learn to paint vibrant scenes with only four colors and four brushes.
CAROLINE JASPER’S COLOR TIP: Value is worth a lot!
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-by Caroline Jasper
Value is a significant color characteristic. Contrasts between darks and lights are key to visual impact. Through comparison of such differences our brains perceive objects and determine depth. Lighter things stand out against dark backgrounds. Dark ones show up better against light. Strong darks and lights together read as close; lack of value contrast reads as distant. Working strictly in black and white, without the distraction of color, it is easier to represent form and lighting. Since we do not live in a black and white world, painters must become aware of value differences among colors both in the subject and on the palette. Painting value studies prior to working in color helps to identify important darks and lights throughout a color reference. Test your color-value acuity. Take a black and white digital shot of your color work or convert a color image to grayscale in a computer photo application. If the image holds up well in black and white, it will present boldly in color.
Caroline’s Color Mixing Tip: AVOID MIXING!
“Remember that color is most brilliant straight from the tube. Any two colors mixed produce a color less vibrant than either original unmixed color. Adding more color(s) further reduces vibrancy. Mixtures become muddied quickly when too many colors participate, especially if combining unlike hues (not close to each other on the color wheel).
I prefer my colors mingled, not mixed. Brush marks of diverse color may be integrated without actually mixing them. At a short distance from the canvas, eyes deliver separated colors to the brain where they “seem” to mix ala-Seurat. Taking advantage of each color’s inherent chromatic potency, the visual effect is much richer than looking at literally mixed, potentially muddy, versions. (Note: I am not suggesting that you buy every color available to side step the need for mixing, nor am I implying that I never mix colors. I do, however, limit mixing where possible.) This approach, while applicable to all color media, is particularly advantageous for oil painters because of slow drying times. Avoiding unwanted wet into wet mixing keeps mud out of the picture.”
- Caroline Jasper –
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