Colour Lessons from Doug - blog #3

Before the virus hit Canada, I was in a weekly art class with Doug Swinton. We all worked on our own references and subject matter and Doug walked from person to person as needed with suggestions, and demos. As our class ended abruptly he sent us colour work to do with a suggestion of 30 minutes and 8" x 10" size. I have colour wheels but never did examples to truly learn and boy I had a lot of learning to do. These 2 paintings are the last in that series of learning and are just studies, stopping before or when the timer went off. The shine is from the wet paint. Along with our chosen colours we could use black (to darken) and white (to lighten).

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Timer set for this lesson - 30 minutes. Triadic colour scheme (3 colours spaced more or less evenly around the colour wheel). Doug sent us written descriptions, colour wheel examples and paintings using a triadic colour scheme. He also sent us a black and white photo that we were to paint. Well, I did not have much success with this one (above). First off, I did not choose the right colours - burnt sienna, yellow ochre and manganese (or ultra marine blue?). Doug let me know that burnt sienna was in the orange family so it is not a true triadic. I could of gone with a napthol red to make it work. We could also use black and white to darken and lighten our colours.

This is my 30 min (or less) result for the last lesson on Split Complementary. Some of Doug's description: "This is just like complimentary but a tad softer. Instead of going directly across the colour wheel you use the two adjacent colours from the direct compliment. Yellow and instead of using purple, you would use a violet to the blue side and a magenta (purple to the red side.)." I used purple (dominant), mixed green and orange. This was more successful and I was happy with this oil sketch. I may finish it now that I am not on a timer. Strange colours for me but it works. Doug's critique of this one: "Split complimentary, 10/10 colour wise, though, if I could say anything it would be, Some of your purples could be dulled down a bit. Other than that it’s super good."