10 Cool Kids and Three Slices

First of all, let me take a moment to thank the 10 terrific students from Tam High's Saturday's class. If they paint with a smidgeon of the enthusiasm they displayed in class, they'll be filling up canvases in a flash! They made tons of new colors and rose to the challenge of identifying and painting values of lemons and limes. The one downside Saturday was that I forgot my camera so I have no photos :-( sorry about that, gals and guys!

Orange Slices
oil on board. 6x6"
click to enlarge


This study, from last week, was about painting the shadow. They have always been my big challenge....to get them to look natural. What I did was set my bowl in a big cardboard box and aim a light to mainly hit the left side of the bowl and oranges with the right side partially in shadow. The goal is to make it look like a difference in the light source (vs a difference in paint color!)

Shadows are about value - you can most any color as long as you get the values right (light vs dark). More soon!