Skills Blocks: Painting - 13th Jan 2016

Skills Blocks: Painting

Health & Safety:

1. Clean up any spillages.
2. Wash hands thoroughly after use.
3. Ensure there is adequate ventilation in the the room you are working in.
4. Don't expose solvents to an open flame.
5. Handle toxic paint removers carefully.
6. Wear an apron.

Equipement used:

• Apron,
• Palette knife,
• Hog hair paint brushes - assorted sizes 5s 6s 11s & 12s flat square, rectangle and round,
• Old rag,
• Old newspaper,
• Paint palette,
• Oil paints,

• Session 1

In this first session, Bob talked a little bit about the history of painting, with the first paintings being cave paintings. They used earth colours - yellows, amber brown, sienna reds. The cadmium colours are primary and made from metals. Ultramarine colours like blue are derived from minerals. In the Byzantine - Greek/Roman period - they were interested in 'al fresco' which means 'in one go'. 

Bob went on to speak about the painter Giotto who was the father of the Renaissance period, where oil paint became a commodity. Painters such as Rafael, Leonardo, Bellini, Rubens, Lucas Cranach (the Elder) and Tintoretto were popular in their use of oil paint which was a mix of linseed oil and pigment. 

In the North Renaissance period Rembrandt started using acrylic paints, which are from oil, but are water based. This paint started being used more commonly in the Romantic period with painters such as Turner and Gainsborough. 

We started off by looking at colour theory, exploring basic colours and how to mix them to form other colours. The base colours we used were:

Lemon yellow,

Cadmium yellow,

Yellow ochre,

Vermillion red,

Cadmium red,

Cobalt blue,

Ultramarine blue,

Phtalo green,

Sap green,

Raw umber,

Ivory black,

Titanium white

It looked a little something like this: 

Google image

Next, taking a clean board and a palette knife, 

Own photo

I started to take two different colours and mixed them together, placing them on my empty board, to create a colour experiment board. Building from two colour combinations to three or more.

This was my first time using oil paints, and it was fantastic to see how easy it was to blend colours together, and how easily different colours could be mixed to create new ones. 

I thoroughly enjoyed exploring how oil paint can be mixed and I even like how my original palette used for the base paints turned out!

Session 2

For the second session, Bob Stone set up a still life composition for us to paint. He encouraged us to paint from within the objects and to use the mixing techniques we learned in the first session, to paint the colours within the objects and beyond the naked eye.

Still Life Composition

Painting Progress

Finished piece

I would have liked to have a sharper, slightly more detailed piece to finish with, but for my first time painting with oil paints, I thought it turned out quite well. I really like how easy the oil paint is to build with.

To clean the brushes, we used a refined coconut oil brush cleaner. This has recently replaced the traditional use of white spirit, as it's safer and isn't toxic like white spirit is.

Session 4

The third session I was unwell, but Bob did a fun colour splashing exercise which I'm disappointed I had to miss out on.

For the fourth session however, Bob set up another still life composition for us to paint. I really tried to incorporate all the techniques Bob had taught us in order to achieve a strong sense of space, as well as depth and perspective. I've used a wide variety of colours in order to accurately show the objects, from a painters perspective. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.