Color Study

Color Study (part 3) Completing an Oil Painting Study is a great way to visually see your finished painting before you begin it. Consider it like a thumbnail sketch of sorts. And if you wish to accurately paint a still life in oils, it is a really good step to take. During the color study, I’ll be showing you some simple ways to color match your paints to the subject matter. Color matching in oil painting is manageable if you follow the steps in the video. The trick is isolating the colors you are looking at. What’s so important about a painted color study? Painting a small, simple painting ahead of time allows you to get acquainted with the colors and the composition of your subject matter. You’ll be able to calculate your oil paint mixtures and determine what colors you will need for the final painting. Color studies are sometimes referred to as a “poster study”. No matter what you call it, it is one more chance to get familiar with your subject matter and allows you to be that much more comfortable when it’s time to create the final painting! If you have a very complicated composition you can even start with an oil painting value study… meaning just focus on the values only to see the strength of the values in the composition overall. This is great for oil painting still life for beginners. Take some color notes here while working directly with your paints. Write down your oil painting color mixing formulas so later on you can reproduce them for your final oil painting. Mixing correct color in oil paints doesn’t have to be a guessing game each time you pick up your brushes. Note: Although I am creating the oil painting color study after the line drawing, sometimes I do the color study first, before the line drawing. Why? This allows me to realize the composition in full color ahead of time. For the sake of beginners I did my best to break up each of these videos into manageable objectives. For the color study the only thing we are really focusing on is color and that’s why I included it here in this order. “Tea Time” - Oil Painting Tutorial: Part 1: Still Life Setup Part 2: Drawing & Transferring Part 3: Color Study Part 4: Mixing Your Colors Part 5: Making a Painting