Eclectic Studio - Tammy Morrison-Koenig

One of my students have asked me to post the demo that I did for a workshop on portraits from last week. This is a 2 hour painting (including dry time) using a limited pallette of quin gold, aliz crimson, Ultramarine blue, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber.  Stage 1: Mask out any highlights or if you are really confident you can paint around them. Due to the small size of this little man I masked. Stage 2 Sunshine : Wet your paper into the hairline, background, even the whites of the eyes. Wait until the sheen is gone from the paper and start dropping in your mid mix of quin gold. I love this color for 2 reasons. 1 it lifts easy, which comes in handy when laying down your road map  and 2 it adds your sunshine.   DRY Stage 3 I added a little BS and BU just to place a few darks in the eyes and hair. DRY Then mix up a light mix of aliz crimson. This is a high power, staining color and should be used with care. It is way easier to add color then to take it away. Wet his little face again a

5 * 5.75 inch Watercolor on 140lb Arches Don’t you feel that sometimes life just seems to get away from you.  This new painting has been a long time coming, her name is Patrise and she runs a craft market on the San Salvador Island. I hope to get back into the swing of things after I can reign this recent chaos back in. Hope you enjoy

So I was asked to teach a workshop this week, I knew that these students had been taking classes for the past 6 months in drawing and acrylics, so I was under the assumption that some of the basics would have been covered. You know... composition, value, brush work, even maybe a color wheel or color chart? Well now I know why they have been frusterated. Ok lets stop and think about this, I wish I would have years ago whe I first started painting. LOL Going from point A to point Z is not going to happen over night, but building a good foundation will only lead to monumental things. - wow that was deep - lol. The most valuable tool in my arsenol is a 2 inch square, or in my case just ripped off the corner of a piece of binder paper, piece of cheap paper with a whole punched out of it. Why you ask? K take that tiny piece of paper and place it anywhere on your reference.. Now ask yourself, Is this tomatoe really red, how do the many tones relate to eachother, what color are the shadows r