In this one off lesson, I will be showing my approach for painting a miniature (part of my own practice). It will be an alla prima piece – which means that I will paint the entire piece from scratch all at once.
Reference Image: http://drawandpaint4free.artcoursework.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/IMG-1279-scaled.jpg
Materials
- Smooth panel or card to paint on
- Very small paint brushes
- Mineral spirits
- Palette cups
- Palette
- Oil paints; titanium white, ivory black, burnt umber, cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson, prussian blue
Process
- Begin by using thinly diluted burnt umber to sketch in the basic shapes of the petals and stem.
- You can erase and correct using a clean brush dipped in mineral spirits.
- Then paint in the flower, starting with white and the by using as simple mixtures as possible.
- Finally, paint in the background and shadow.
- Once the shadow and background are laid in, you can blend them together to soften the shadow edge.