Colorful Peppers

 The photo for today's lesson on colorful peppers was provided by JoAnn.  Thanks, JoAnn.  

This is just the first layer.  I used Cadmium Red for the red one, Cadmium yellow for the yellow one, and Sap Green for the green one.

  I added some of the lighter colors on the red and green peppers, and started to work on the darker areas in the yellow.  It's hard to darken yellow.  Sometimes I use orange, sometimes green, sometimes brown, and sometimes it's complement - purple.  In this case, I used YELLOW OCHER, which I thought looked the most like the darker inner section of the pepper.

Lastly, I put in the darks and the shadows.  I did this in more than one layer, to get the right values.  If  your color doesn't look dark enough, wait until it is totally dry and then put in another layer of the same color.  For the red pepper, I used Alizarin Crimson for the darker areas.  For the green pepper, I added Ultramarine Blue to the Sap Green.  The shadows were made with Cobalt Blue (you can use Ultramarine instead) with a tiny bit of Burnt Sienna to dull it to a grayish blue.  

Student Work - Parrot

by JoAnn 

New Members

Jim and Margaret Onesios have joined our virtual class.  You may remember them from the class at the Senior Center.   I have added Margaret's "Rock Abstract" and Jim's "Waterlily" to the appropriate sections - you can scroll down and take a look.  Welcome, Margaret and Jim.

Red Parrot

The first thing I painted was the yellow, and I included any of the red where there was yellow showing through.  I added the red, and blended it down into the yellow.  I used Cadmium yellow and Cadmium red.Added cobalt blue.

Added some darks and details.  The darker blue is Ultramarine Blue + Burnt Sienna.  

I opted for a light (Cobalt Blue) background instead of the black.  

Student Work - Waterlily

by Peggy

by Nannette

by JoAnn

by Jim

Waterlily

Try to make your drawing of the lily large, so that you don't have to paint as much background.  I only drew the flower at first, so that I wouldn't get the lines confused with the lines for the lily pads.

I painted the flower first, before i drew in the rest (but I forgot to take the photo).  I used lemon yellow for most of it, and cadmium yellow for a few of the petals that looked darker and warmer to me.  In hindsight, I'm not sure I like the way that looks, so it might be better to just stick with the lemon yellow for all the petals.  I painted the center orange.

I used Sap Green for the lily pads, with some Ultramarine Blue added for the darker ones.  The yellow green ones on the right were Yellow Ochre mixed with Sap Green.

I usually use orange to make shadows on a yellow object, but they looked more like green to me, so I mixed some yellow ochre with sap green and painted in the shadow shapes on the petals. 

I painted in the dark water with a black that I made from Thalo Green and Alizarin Crimson.  If you don't have these two colors, just use black - or black mixed with a little green.  

I wasn't planning to add the little pieces of twigs and dried petals, but decided at the last minute that it would make the painting more interesting, so I added a tiny bit of "stuff".  Just yellow and dark brown.  It's not necessary to do this if you would rather not.  

Student Work - Quilt

by Peggy

by Nannette

by JoAnn

Floral Quilt Part 2 - Making it a "mixed media" piece

I worked on three of the rectangle sections first.  I wet the section, and with a watercolor pencil (you can use watercolor crayon also) I scribbled in the upper green one, and added dots in the lower green and the blue.  I had to use a brush to blend them a little, since the dots looked to "planned" otherwise.

On this part, I did the wet and scribble on two of the red ones (only one shows in the photo), and the "wet and dots) on the butterfly.   Don't do this on too many of the shapes, because we will want to try salt on some, and negative painting on some, and who knows what else. 

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These next pieces are done with SALT

 I picked sections that were a pale color, and painted a darker color over it, and while STILL WET I sprinkled salt.  Then let it dry.

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The next ones were done with NEGATIVE PAINTING/COLORING

I drew leaf shapes on a pale green section, and negative colored it with a black Sharpie.  You could use a brush and black paint, or use a black watercolor pencil instead, but the pen adds a good dark.

This one was done over a pink section, with a purple pen.  Again, paint or watercolor pencil would be fine too.

In the top one, I used a pale red section, and drew flower shapes, then used a blue watercolor pencil to negative color around it.  I then went over the blue pencil with a slightly wet paintbrush.

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Next, I painted over all the sections that I didn't do anything to yet.  I just wet them and added a bit of a darker version of the same color  (or for the yellow, I added orange).  I did this for the fowers and leaves also.  

I took a light blue Crayona crayon and scribbled on the T shaped strips, and then mixed ultramarine blue and burnt sienna to make a bluish gray, and painted over the scribbled strips.  The crayon resisted the paint.  

And lastly, I painted the large black shape carefully around the flowers and butterfly.  I also used a thin black Sharpie and scribbled again over the T shaped strips.  So that's it - a lot of playing around with stuff to make it look a bit like printed fabric.  

And just to show you the photo that inspired this:  ("Our" piece is just above center).  I hope you enjoyed this one.

A Section of a Floral Quilt (Part 1)

This is a small part of a quilt that I saw somewhere online, and decided that it would make a good painting subject some day.  I cropped three or four different sections, and this seems to be the easiest to draw.   (You are going to need a ruler for this one).

Here is my drawing.  See, it's not as scary as it looks.  But I got started late tonight, so I will be adding the painting instructions tomorrow.   Depending on how big your paper is, you may have less of the top, bottom, and side small sections.  Just make sure that you make the section with the flowers bigger than the rest.  These are pieces of fabric with small prints on them, but we are going to paint them solid colors and then possibly add texture to them.

If this is all you see when you open this lesson up tomorrow,  check later on for more.

I started painting the rectangular sections first.  I am not going to make mine look exactly like the photo, but I am sticking to similar color families.  I skipped every other space at first so that the colors wouldn't run together, and then filled in the others later.  (Still a few more to go).  I varied the colors, using all the reds I have, and a purple, and a few blues and a few greens.   Use whatever you have.  If you don't have enough different shades of a color, just make some darker and some lighter.  I will post when I finished this phase.  I'M GOING TO MAKE THIS A TWO WEEK PROJECT.  Next week I will show you how to texture each section to make it look a little like a printed fabric.

Okay, so now I have all the sections painted in.  THIS IS ALL THAT I WANT YOU TO DO T HIS WEEK.   You may notice that I painted the "black" parts in light blue.  We will fix that next week.   I'd like you to send me your paintings so far, so I can see what you did.  But I won't post them until next week when we finish the piece.   Again, use any colors you have, or change the colors if you want.  Just keep similar colors together so it doesn't look too scattered.

Student Work - Rose

by Peggy

by JoAnn

also by JoAnn

by Nannette

Love and Peace Rose Part 2

So I continued painting all the flower petals, doing the same as in Part 1, wetting the petal, painting yellow first, and then adding red.  It dried kind of pale except for that one petal, so I will have to darken most of them a bit. 

I also put a layer of yellow on all the leaves and the stem.

I darkened some of the petals, and painted in the leaves with sap green.  The leaves don't really seem to make a lot of sense, so just draw and paint what you see.  It won't matter much, because the flower itself is the star. 

"Love and Peace" Rose Part 1

Sorry fot the late start on this one.   Google locked me out of my blog for several days and I now have a new password.   Hopefully that's the end of my password problems.

This is "Love and Peace", one of my roses.  The buds usually start out yellow, and then they end up mostly pink with some yellow undertones.  This year they seem to be more pink than usual, but you can still see the yellow showing through on some of the petals.

I tried to make my drawing darker so that you can see it well.  If you haven't already done your drawing, you can lightly sketch a big oval and then draw the petals to fit the oval.  That way you won't end up with a tiny flower on a big piece of paper.   We aren't going to do a background (unless you want to), so the bigger the flower, the better.

I only did three petals today.  I wet the petal and added the yellow first, and then I added the red.  I don't know what color red I used (it isn't labeled).  My Alizarin Crimson was really dirty, so I was afraid to use that, and Cadmium is too orangy.  Alizarin Crimson would probably be your best choice.   I did petals that are far apart so that they wouldn't run into each other.

I will post more of the painting tomorrow.  But this is should get you started.