Yesterday during life drawing class Jamie had us doing these small drawings in boxes that were limited to only 3 minutes long. I did a few tonight while timing myself at 5 minutes. The focus of the drawings was to force myself to look at the big shapes of light, not to worry about the accuracy of the drawing too much and just get the feel for the composition in big shapes and relative value.
I also started on my first color chart in a long time. I did these once years ago. The idea is to basically take every color that you use on your palette and mix it with all of the other colors, then add white in 5 steps. I started with Alizarin Crimson because I’m really curious of what I can actually do with it. So the first column tonight was just alizarin crimson right out of the tube mixed with white in 5 steps. The next column I will mix alizarin crimson with equal parts cadmium yellow pale then add white with 5 steps of value. After that I do the same with cadmium yellow deep, then Terra Rosa, then transparent oxide red, etc. Until alizarin crimson was mixed with each color on my palette. Its really a great way to obtain a great understanding of what your palette can do. When I’m done I will end up with 9 charts, and each chart will have 45 swatches of color, so that is a total of 405 swatches.
