I'd like to present to you my latest oil portrait painting which is a study of a self portrait by the Swedish painter Anders Zorn. He's famous in figurative painting circles for his use of very few colours.
This portrait was a demonstration piece for one of my students, to show just what is possible with only four colours.
There were two parts to the limited palette colour mixing workshop.
The first was the colour mixing with a limited palette consisting of only the following:
Titanium White
Cadmium Red
Ochre
Ivory Black
Doing the colour mixing exercise is something I avoided at the very start of my career. Boring! Now having to repeat it for students underscores how important and useful it is. Everyone at the start thinks the similarly, "Boring!", but by the end of it, come to realise that it is no as simple as they thought.
You don't just mix the colours as you would on the computer. Physical paint has other properties such as tinting strength. Colours such as Cadmium Red overpower other colours. So while the formula might say 50/50, the Cadmium Red needs to be dialled way back, to say 30/70 to achieve an optical mix of 50/50.
The second half of the workshop was to put the new knowledge into practice by executing a copy of one of Anders Zorn's self portraits. The portrait is also painted with only the above listed colours.
The Zorn palette is of course just a starting point. Zorn himself varied the palette. The palatte can be extended with a select number of colours to add emphasis and variation.
I always learn a great deal from these master studies myself.
If you're curious to know more, here's the Wikipedia entry about Zorn.
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More of my artwork can be found on my website. LeoPlaw.com
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