It's a draw

Carol Marine must have talked with Bert Dodson because they both want you to sketch a lot and both of them start with drawing your hand. She suggested drawing your hand holding something.

She also recommended carrying around a sketch book to draw while waiting for things like oil changes.  Funny I just had to have my oil changed.  This wasn't the first time that I sketched in public but it was really creepy.  Every time I looked up this guy was staring at me and I wasn't even drawing him.  Usually when two strangers glance at each, they take a quick look and turn their heads, but this guy was just staring at me.  Unfortunately our cars were ready at the same time, but I waited to get mine - I was really creeped out.  The sketch below is from the library - a great place to sketch because people tend to return to the same position or they sleep.  Either way it is a good thing. 

Lean to the left, lean to the .....

I love this book.  The more I read it, the more I want to.  After saturation, came the fact that colours have a lean.  For instance Cadmium yellow leans blue while  Cadmium yellow light goes red and so on. I love this hint she gave  - put the colours you use on a piece of paper and which way they lean.  This is so important and just this hint is almost worth the price of the book.
You should know which way your colours go because if you mix them you could get grey unexpectedly.  If this doesn't make sense buy the book.

Paint what you see.  She had a problem with egg yolks because everyone knows they are yellow, but really they are not the  bright yellow out of the tube..  I had a similar problem with candles (cheesy plug for my other blog   5minutesfromcool.blogspot.ca ) and the colours of flames.

She warned about using white because it makes things chalky - that is what my evil teacher Suzy always says- maybe I should listen to her more. She talked about burnt umber - it sounded so good I may go buy a tube.

The next exercise was to do colour charts and maybe one day I will do them but not today.  My inner child is having a tantrum and my outer child says she can`t make me.

She did suggest using paint chips.  The exercise is to mix a colour to match the paint chip.  This isn't the first time I have done this but a good exercise is always worth repeating.

I think I am pretty good at this and if the painting career doesn't work out I can always get a job putting drops of paint on a paint chip. You can`t even tell the beige ones I did - I am that good.

The orange one does show but if you squint it goes away.  Squint really hard.

The colour card is from Farrow & Ball.  I keep their card because the names of the colours amuse me.  I would love to paint a room Wimborne white or cat`s paw but the winner is elephant`s breath. Say no more, say no more.  (from monty python it seemed appropriate).