A little down time.

Hi my dear friends

I have been super busy with holidays and renovating of late - you can read about it here (if you haven't already),  but what this does mean is I haven't had time to do some more painting.

I have, however, found what I think may be one of the best tools I have seen.

It is from Blick Art materials and is the "Magic color mixing guide".

A very handy tool, don't you think!

I will be back soon.

Hugs

Happy orange day!

I don't know if I have said this before, but I love orange.  

Orange reminds me of sweet fruit.

Orange reminds me of the crayons we had in early school...and how they smelt!

(yep, like crayons)

Orange reminds me of my Mums Orange cake...

Following on with our colour mixing, today I bring you...

Orange!

Did you guess?

Using gorgeous red and yellows there are lots of gorgeous happy shades to be made.

I made a range of oranges for a painting I have started, using an

Australian Red Voilet for my cool red and a Crimson for my warm.

Using the same yellow, I added each of these in small steps.

On the left is the Australian Red Violet range...and the right is the Crimson range.

Then, I placed them against my photo 

to see whether I was happy with the colour matches.

How are you going with your colour mixes?

If you have a favourite "colour recipe" please let me know!

Next up...Purple!!

Happy painting!

Let's make colour!

Hi my lovelies

You know what?! I am so relieved you have stuck with me and forgiven my rather extended absence.

Computer problem fixed: check.

Am I itching to paint with you? Yes!

Are you ready to paint with me? I hope so!

Previously on Paint with Me...

So, a very long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away) I was taking us down the path of painting a tree.

Why a tree? 

Because a tree is identifiable... I want you to throw away your "it must look like" feelings towards painting (or drawing for that matter) and take comfort in the fact that a tree is a tree.  As long as it is grounded and reaches happily toward the sky, then that's perfect for what we will do!

Before we got started painting, I was going to take us through some basic colour blending, so that you could be familiar with the primary colours you have chosen.  This helps to understand the expected paint blends with your paint...you aren't going to achieve a beautiful crisp apple green with a warm based blue and yellow.

Let's bring us to today....

It was at this point I was going to post a rather long winded blog about colour mixing, but who am I fooling?!  This is the web and there are oodles of wonderful resources providing the same content.  So please do have a search for primary colour mixing: the web really is a modern day marvel for information.

At the most basic level, this is what I want you to do:

Green Mixing:

1. Paint a nice swatch of your yellow;
2. Next, add a small dab of blue to your yellow, mix and paint the resulting green next to your yellow swatch;
3. Next, add another dab of blue, mix your green and paint next to your previous swatch.
4. Continue this until you have pretty much reached your darkest green...the step before your pure blue.

Orange:

1. Add red to your yellow in small quantities, painting small swatches gradually in steps all the way up to your red.

Purple:

1. The same again, adding the blue to the red.

What did you get?

You know, the first time I ever did this I was surprised.  I honestly thought that my red and blue would indeed create purple.  A nice rich royal purple.  Nup, instead I had some sort of rusty colour, that was sort of purplish, but was not even close to my minds eye vision of purple.  

So what did I do?  Well, I threw in some more red...no, that's not it!  And on I went, trying to create a colour that would never happen.  I thought I had "mixed it wrong".  The true problem was I hadn't started from the right base.  

Don't even start me on green!  Where I expected a happy lush new green, was a muted olive. Olive I tell you!

So were your results what you expected?

Knowing what you can achieve with the colours you have at hand is the first step to creating your beautiful painting - you can have the best composition in the world, but if the colours don't sing for you, then you will never be happy.  Let's face it, olive green may be exactly the type of tree green you are after.

Next step....brown!!

Happy painting, and be back soon!

Hugs

PC died...

Hi my lovely friends!!

I know, I know... It's been ages, hasn't it!

I'm afraid it is going to be longer still before I return to painting with you, because for some reason blogger will not load on the Mac now, and one finger typing on my phone is REALLY hard work.

Please forgive me :)

hugs

Cath

It's my birthday...surprise!!

Hi everyone!!

I had a really special birthday surprise today. 

You can read about it here at my Tigs White Canvas blog which is the place I tend to ramble a little about family life, home life and anything that takes my fancy.

But let me give you a clue about my gift...

This is a copy of (one of) Monet's waterlilies that a friend requested.

Can you guess?

Wishing you a super wonderful day!

Hugs,

Colour blending

Hi my lovelies

I hope you are all enjoying a beautiful start to the week.  The Autumn chill is just started to set in here, and the trees are starting to look GLORY-OUS!

I thought I would share a couple of quick colour blend samples I did, using just red, yellow, blue and white.

These were both painted with exactly the same yellow, red and blue, using my trusty palette knife, and they were blended directly on the canvas rather than on a palette first. Yummy!  The nice thing about the knife is that you can blend, blend, blend and not worry about any details.

So get ready, because next up we are going to look at colour blending trees!

Big hugs

I love trees!!

Ballalaba, NSW

Hi all my gorgeous friends

First off, I would like to send huge thanks, 

enveloped in a big squishy hug, 

to my gorgeous friend 

Sarah 

 at 

Modern Country Style.

It is because of Sarah that I have many of you here joining our fun.  

Sarah and her lovely man Guy;

who will ever forget him cracking her blog password 

to leave a gorgeous Valentines message

 to the world 

about his love for her...swoon,

 participated in my first Session to complete the Iris.

I am so proud of you Sarah for bravely sharing your painting with the world!!

You rock honey!

So to you my new friends, I hope that you have had an opportunity to dig around here and see what we are all about.  Please ask questions if anything is not clear - it is the best way for me to make sure that I am giving you all the support you need for us to paint together.

Gallery re-think

So, I was trying to work out the best way for us to share with each other.  

And then I took a good long hard look at myself!

If I can't moosh (yep, moosh!)  parenthood, work, sports, cooking, hobbies, sleeping AND blogging into, what!...a week!?...then how in the world do I expect you to do the same?  I mean, honestly!

So, to that end, I have decided that I am going to run a Monthly Gallery.  

What do you think?

One big happy monthly gallery, where you can post any painting from one of our sessions...and maybe I can throw in an incentive as the gallery date looms. (ooooh, surprises!)

So, on with the show: are you ready for another session?

Get ready for trees...!

What's not to love about trees?  Not only are they beautiful, grounded and provide us with dimension, shade, colour, texture and dabbled light, they are also fantastic to draw and paint because they are so forgiving.

To start we will do a quick sketch to get familiar with our tree, then we will be painting our tree using just the primary colours of red, blue and yellow.  We will focus upon colour blending, and if you love black, please pop it away because I promise we will never be using black. Unless we are using black.  Hmmm, anyway, no black for colour blending at least.

Plus, bonus! *you* get to choose the trees that you would like to paint....ya-huh!! I'm nice like that :-)

So in my brief absence here is your homework:

1. Find a tree/trees that you really love that you would like to paint.  We are looking at the traditional "broccoli" like tree - big top, lots of leaves, nice exposed trunk.
2. I will be looking to do this exercise in acrylics: so if you  are going to Paint with Me and need to buy acrylic paint, you will need a pure red, yellow, blue - try to not go for a orange red, green blues etc.  

If you would like to use a different medium, please do!

The idea here is flexibility

and the colour theory will apply regardless

however if you need any help with your chosen medium, give me a hoy!!

I hope you are excited!!  I am, that's for sure - we are enjoying the trees turning in our gorgeous early Autumn and this is without doubt, my most favourite time of the year.  Gorgeous!

Take care 'til next time.

Big hugs