Lady Apple Color Study #1

Lady Apples Color Study #1 – 6" x 6" Oil on Canvas Panel SOLD

Again I am taking a painting class taught by Danni Dawson. She is a great instructor, and regularly gives out homework to be completed between classes. This painting is the first of three color studies assigned. Danni apprenticed under Nelson Shanks, who followed the colorist theories of Charles Hawthorne. Color studies essentially are paintings where you experiment with paint handling and color interpretation. You start by using pure color (mixed with white to adjust value) and then using another value adjusted color you lay that on top of the paint already on the canvas. The exercise is to improve color application and paint handling all at once. Sometimes you make a real mess out of the painting, and that is where the term “mudheads” come from… Though Danni has emphasized how these color studies also teach you how to get out of bad situations, how to recapture the glow of the subject.

With this painting I began with cad lemon and white and then used different layers of blues, greens and yellows again to capture the green in the Lady Apples, and conversely I used a different color as my initial starting point for the red areas. It was real fun though the real trick to keeping the painting clear is to clean your brush all the time! Otherwise the color mixes into a brown mush…