The Art of Color – Oil Painting Workshop

The Art of Color – An Oil Painting Workshop
John DeFrancesco – Instructor
Tuesdays & Thursdays, February 7, 9, 14, 16
10a.m. to 12:30
$95 Registration Fee plus Items on Materials List
Minimum Number of Students – 4
Maximum Number of Students – 12

Master your control and application of color. You will paint during each session. This will be an intensive four sessions on all-things related to color in painting:

* Understand the properties of your paints (pigments, opacity, transparency, chroma, value, color family.).
* Mix and make color-reference charts. Learn advanced mixing technique of extending the mixes to develop a broader range of hues to paint with.
* Mix a variety of values in high-chroma, mid values and muted (desaturated) hues without making “mud.”
* Overcome habitual mixing on the palette by mixing spectacular combinations right on the canvas.
* Make the color wheel your helper to improve palette decisions and achieve color balance and harmony.
* Learn why and how to apply paint to canvas rather than painting the paint; learn to manipulate and blend the various color notes and edges for visual harmony.
* Train your eye to see the multiple colors in the shadows and then to paint them; and to see the subtle temperature shifts in the light family.
* Learn how the following will enhance your painting technique: Val-hue; Color-notes; Mosaics; Marbleized-color.

We will also touch on several overlooked basics regarding composition, focal points, perspective drawing, brushwork, glazing and scumbling, and the various contrasts that will produce a more pleasing painting.

You will receive useful references related to the above subjects. And as a bonus, you will receive a valuable chart from the master book on color mixing, “ Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green.” This chart will help you mix intense, mid and subdued hues with the three primary paint colors.

John DeFrancesco – Artist, Monument, Colorado
John was educated as a landscape architect and horticulturalist.
His interest in plants and their place in the garden is evident in many of his oil paintings. Subtlety and softness of mood, edges and color are distinctive in his work.
The Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts, Palmer Lake Art Group, Pikes Peak Library District and U.S. Air Force Academy have awarded his artwork.

Artist Statement
I believe the ability to paint is a God-given gift that is to be shared. Therefore, I am driven to record nature emotionally, not simply artistically. And I want to share the emotional experience with the viewer of the painting.
I work to capture not just an impression of what I see, but an interpretation of what I feel. Sometimes that calls for subtlety and softness of mood; at other times it dictates boldness of form and color.
Just as music is made by playing one note after another, a painting comes together by placing one note of color against another. There are so many colors in nature that our brains don’t process when we look at an object. My task is to find the various nuances of color in any given scene and place those onto the canvas. That process produces a gamut of mood ranging from a rainy day in a meadow to a sun-filled time at a beach, and everything in between.
In viewing my paintings, if one feels the warmth of the sun, recalls a childhood memory of home or an event sees the river water flowing or senses the fragrances in a garden, then I have accomplished my goal.

Visit his web site at www.johndefrancesco.com