Painting Peonies in Oils - Live Alla Prima Oil Painting Session

Peonies. Ridiculously complicated flower - especially when you have one of them fully open, like this. But hopefully you can see, looking at this ref photo, that I've arranged them very carefully as an interplay of shadow and light. Both peonies, and the little bud, are emerging from shadow. The light on the "wall" (a painted MDF board in reality) behind the flowers is as much a part of the design as the flowers are. If you squint right down, what do you see? That's what I'm going to be aiming for. At least, to start with. I'm hoping to get at least the feeling of the flowers, too. But mostly I'm interested in how much that design of light and shadow shapes can reflect...actually, I'm not sure what. But something. Ephemerality. Something half-hidden. Something more, anyway, than two flowers in a vase. We'll see what happens. Materials --------------- I'll be painting on a 10x8 Ampersand Gessobord panel, oiled out with linseed oil and a little solvent. Brushes: Likely synthetic flats mostly, and, yes SPATULAS! Paints (Michael Harding unless otherwise noted): Lead white (Rublev #)1 Cad yellow (?) Quinacridone rose possibly pyroll magenta Green gold Tranparent red oxide Raw umber Ivory black Phthalo green possibly Reference photo -------------------------- https://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/wp-... -----------------------------USEFUL LINKS----------------------------- If you're interested in learning with me, you can see the online art school I run here: https://courses.learning-to-see.co.uk... Your first month is only $1 if you use the coupon code school1. After that first month, it reverts to the normal monthly price of $33. The online art school give you access to a bunch of courses, membership in my wonderful (and private) artist's community, live critique calls and a bunch of other stuff. There's no minimum period and you can cancel at any time. The app I use when I'm teaching to investigate the colour is called ChromaMagic. It's a fantastic learning tool. You can find it on the Apple and Google Play stores, and there is also a Windows version. It's very inexpensive and extremely useful! If you struggle at all with judging values and colours, or with mixing, this is a great tool to help you calibrate your eye. You can get the Munsell value scale - which allows you to translate values from the app directly to your painting - from Paul Centore on Ebay here, also very inexpensive: https://www.ebay.com/itm/223003792036 Subscribe to my email list to get notifications of future live streams and other helpful info about painting in oils: https://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/sub...