Art-Along Hillside Houses 16/04/2020

Hello all, here are the details for our online class this Thursday evening, 16th April.
This week you can paint along with me and create an illustrative piece based on hillside houses.

We will continue using the glazing techniques we have been developing over the last few weeks.

We will be painting in an illustrative style, where all colours are slightly heightened and exaggerated.
Paying particular attention to tonal values, and the use of contrast to make the houses stand out from each other and the hillside.

I have added a reference photo at the bottom of this post, the houses are up a steep hillside in Looe, a small fishing village in Cornwall, UK.

If you’d like to join in, you can download my original line drawing  image:

Looe Line Drawing © Karen Smith, April 2020, you may download this line drawing for personal use only, this image may not be reproduced or copied in any form.

For our session you will need:

• Your Hillside Houses printout, ordinary copy paper is fine for this exercise.
• A spare piece of paper to try out your paint mixes on before applying colour to your painting.
• Watercolour paints: cool and warm yellows, a cool blue, a deep blue, a cool red, a yellow- green, a grey or black and a cool brown.
• Watercolour brushes, (small – round 3 or 4)
• 2 pots of clean water
• Rag or kitchen roll (for wiping your brushes on)

Here are some of the colours you may want to use.

Lemon yellow or Hansa yellow (mix for foliage) – (C03 swivel paints)
Cadmium yellow (mix for foliage) – (C05 swivel paints)
Pthalo Blue or Cobalt Blue (mix for foliage) – (C34 swivel paints)
Sap green (foliage) – (C25 swivel paints)
Crimson (red highlights – car and doors) – (C13 swivel paints)
Yellow ochre (houses) – (C38 swivel paints)
Burnt Umber (roofs, shadows) – (mix C43 & C40 swivel paints)
Paynes Grey (roofs, window panes, shadows) – (mix C43 & C37 swivel paints)
Indigo blue (roofs, window panes, shadows) – (C37 swivel paints)

Inktense Pencils by Derwent

For those of you using inktense pencils during this paint along, I would recommend using a palette (a white plate is ideal), and touching a wet brush to the solid ink core of the pencil, close to the plate to create a mix of ‘watercolour’ paint.

Here’s some of the colour names you may want to use from the 36 Inktense pencil set:

Sherbet Lemon (a cool yellow you can mix with blue for foliage)
Cadmium Yellow (a warm yellow you can mix with blue for foliage)
Bright Blue or Sea Blue (mix for foliage)
Felt Green, Leef Green, Ionian Green , Iron Green (foliage)
Cherry (red highlights – car and doors)
Tan (houses)
Bark or Willow (dark browns for roofs, shadows)
Paynes Grey and charcoal Grey (roofs, window panes, shadows)
Iron Blue (a deep blue for roofs, window panes, shadows)

Class update

Here’s a reminder of the colour mixing we did at the start of the lesson on Thursday 23rd April – mixing cool and warm browns.

cool red (Crimson Red ) + cool blue (Phthalo Blue/ Cobalt Blue) + cool yellow (Lemon Yellow) = Cool Brown
mix red & yellow, then add small amounts of blue

warm red (Cadmium Red) + warm blue (Ultramarine Blue) + warm yellow (Cadmium Yellow)  = Warm Brown
mix red and blue then small amounts of yellow

To finish off your paintings, here is a detail of my source photo for our Hillside Houses painting, showing the bottom part of the picture, with the cars along the wharf.