Continuing the online mentorship with Rosso Crimson. This month we worked on paler skin tones and the overall palette, the colours we’ve used for skintones throughout the course are:

• Titanium white
• A pre-mixed blue-grey
• Yellow ochre
• Naples yellow
• Cadmium red
• Alizarin crimson
• Indian red
• Ivory black

Time was limited this month due to other commitments so I did a quick sketch, oil on paper, just to get some more practice in mixing and painting faces.  As you can see I didn’t completely like two of them. The expression on the middle one was quite intriguing so she survived. As an underpainting this was quite successful….and with more time I would work on the lighter tones.

Continuing the year long class, in May I worked on the florals and adding the background.  I went for a grey/blue to offset the orange/gold of the underpainting. This painting is now finished and I’ll announce when the next collection is available for sale. So if you’re looking for original artworks for a minimalist living space then make sure you’re on the email list. Sign up here.

April’s class saw Rosso develop the abstract flowers in her portrait plus the addition of background colour. I’ve started some florals, and will gradually add to these. Not brave enough for the background yet so this is very much a work in progress.

juliettebelmonte.com

Virtual Portrait Workshop October 30 – November 20 2022, and here’s how her website describes the class:

A mixed media portrait workshop with Juliette Belmonte.

In this four week workshop, students will learn to incorporate found objects, fabrics, sentimental objects and papers to create multi layered mixed media portraits. We will be working with acrylic paints and water based mediums. There will be some feedback during class hours and I will hold “office hours” on Zoom for two additional hours throughout the week for personal feedback and questions.

It was the first time I’ve done an art class via zoom, and meeting Juliette and the other students was great. Seeing how everyone’s work progressed over 4 weeks with Juliette’s suggestions was greatly beneficial. She shares her process on how to tackle the dreaded blank canvas and gave detailed feedback on colour-mixing and how she approaches the use of mixed media. This class gave me the confidence to tackle portraits and to keep the parts of a painting I like and happily keep adding layers to crate the overall result.