Eat Your Veggies

Art of Tracey Fletcher King

The course called Delicious Paint taught by Tracey Fletcher King is going swimmingly well. Yep, I'm swimming in paint! For anyone who's interested, there are a few spots left in the class and I just found out that you can still sign up for another week until the class closes to new students. No worries, you'd not be behind, the class runs for the rest of the month. The class is all video tutorials and Tracey answers all questions promptly and gives suggestions on how to improve. It's really a great course and will fit both beginners and accomplished artists who want to learn the wonderful techniques that Tracey uses to achieve her amazing work.

I've been working hard to learn to successfully layer paint. The technique is also called underpainting where you layer lighter colors that will help brighten and give nuance to the finished painting after all layers are added. I've learned that you never know what colors will enhance the final painting. Sometimes putting a blue under a green apple painting will give new life to the final green you want to achieve. Adding purple to a blueberry's bottom will give it extra depth. It's a wonderfully creative lesson and it forces you to try to see nuances in your subject matter.

green onions

Luckily, I was raised by a mother with extraordinary talent in knowing and recognizing color. My mother was always amazingly genius at remembering the unique color of something. It worked well for her as she's been an artist, interior designer and supervisor in women's clothing over the many years. I remember she could organize a store to look like the best organized and most beautifully put together rainbow of clothing. I'm glad I was raised always learning about the undertone of colors. It made it easier to understand that all colors have other colors in them.

Now I'm trying to put all that learning to good use as I give depth to my paintings. After only a few days of teaching from Tracey I finally did a successful painting of green onions that had depth. Green, until today, has been my nemesis, probably because it's one of my very favorite colors. When I go into paint something green, like a leaf, I  go full gusto which makes for a very flat and usually too dark painting. I have to learn a lighter touch and also to be patient with layers.

Lemon, blueberries and garlic

Here I started with a light pure yellow and layered and layered and layered greens from yellow-green all the way to blue and olive green. Then I added the pièce de résistance, a trick from Trace. Use Payne's grey to add slight shadows at the darkest part of your subject.  Now, you have to be light when you're doing lighter stuff. I had to be really careful when I added it to the lemon. I was really light, using just the very tip of my brush to add the Payne's grey.

I'm so happy to be adding new techniques and tricks. This is how to feel like an accomplished artist, thanks Trace!
Best,

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