This is an oil painting demo I recently painted for a group I regularly teach in Langley. The focus of the demo was to how to see and paint the subtleties of colour reflection in the planes of an object depending on which way a plane faces. In other words, if the plane of an object is facing up, the colour of that plane will be influenced by the reflection of colour above it. This is easier to see on a white object, which made [...]

Within my workshops I try to emphasize that photos are one of the reason an artists painting is so bad. Photos darken the darks and lighten the lights, killing any interesting value scheme. In addition, photos over-saturate and under-saturate colour and do not properly show colour temperature. Using photos for reference is great, but don't use photos to paint from. So what does this have to do with thumbnail sketching? Planning. Starting artists think that just painting a photo onto a canvas makes it good. [...]