The first day of Camille’s class, we followed her “Color Boot Camp”, which involves painting colored blocks in natural sunlight, after the technique she learned from Henry Henche.

These exercises allow you to clearly see color relationships. Each block is painted a different color (in light and shade), as well as two different colored table cloth. This technique is similar to the “color separation” technique I’ve written about before here. When you think about it, none of the colors in these studies should repeat, after all, they’re all separate colors. The same is true in nature, it’s extremely rare to see two things that are not the same the same color–especially when you introduce distance, space and air. Have trouble simplifying outdoors? I know I do. This simplies things greatly, so you can really focus and study on color.

We experienced mixed sun and shade during the day, so as the sun came and went, she moved between the overcast day study (above) and the full sun study (below).

A palette knife is used to you’re forced to not get too detailed, keep the colors clean and solid. You keep working each relationship paint over paint, constantly adjustmenting, keeping the light and shadow planes very clearly separated.

This is a great exercise to judge color and value relationships that is transferable to the field. Tomorrow, we’re going to in effect paint a “block”, but this time a building in a park.

Here’s another study, this featuring a rounded object:

I did paint a seascape after class, but it’s too dark to photograph (I like to photograph in natural light, in the shade). I’ll post tomorrow. ‘Til then!