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The color layer for the flemish technique of oil painting.

This lesson discusses the color layer when using the layered flemish technique. Now, understand, this is not my trade marked technique or method of painting. It's been around a very long time, and it has been the easiest for me to use. The method was introduced and perfected in the renaissance era.

You'll be amazed at how little color paint in this color layer lesson you have to apply to achieve a magnificent painting. Why?, if you lived when this method was developed, you would be finding bugs, rocks, plants, and drying them. Then you would be crushing them and adding linseed oil until you made what you can get in a tube today!

Well, not exactly. Their pigments were sometimes very dangerous but they were brilliant! Modern manufacturing comes close, but I can only imagine that their paints simply performed better than today's modern equivalents.

Let's get to painting! I won't get into great detail about the mixing of your colors here. Here we will concentrate on strictly the color layer. Mixing is another subject that will be handled on the web site. But a few tips will help get the ball rolling.

Table of Contents for Main Lessons:

1.Materials needed to paint.	6.Toning the canvas.
2.Stretching the canvas part 1.	7.The Umber Underlayer Painting.
3.Stretching the canvas part 2.	8.The Gray Under Painting.
4.Preparing the Canvas.	9.The Color Layers.
5.Transfering your drawing.	10.The Finishing Layer.

Get a color wheel. Use as few paints as possible to achieve the color you need. Mix small amounts at first, (you'll have to scrap some, but don't throw it out.) (You can add it to your gray mixtures in small amounts). Once mixed, pull a little on knife and squint your eyes while viewing the knife just in front of your subject.

If the knife disappears, you've matched your color. Don't be overly concerned here. If your red or green is not perfectly matched to the subject, who's gonna know! The human brain only has about a 6 minute recall when it comes to exact color!

Now, that doesn't mean paint a alizara crimson apple! Keep your colors true to nature as close as you can, but don't spend 20 minutes trying to find an exact match.

Here I start a set of grapes.

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After some correcting.

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And final blending with dry brush blending mop brush.

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Below is a finished color layer with a few details added. You usually save small details and texture for the final layers, but I couldn't resist adding a few dew drops at this point. I talk about creation of dew drops in great detail in my e-book.

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Speaking of dew drops! I'm going to add a full page to these beauties as they are one of the best ways to separate your work from most others.

If you're happy with your results, sit back relax, and allow your painting to dry a few days. You can start on another while you wait thereby having several in the "pipeline".

Click here when your ready to go on to the next step with the Finishing Layer lesson

Click here if you'd like to head back to the Main Lessons Page

Click here to return to the top of this page Color Layer

Maybe you need even more details and photo examples of this part of the process. You can download the complete book.

It has about 250 photo's of step by step instruction similar to what you see here, but just more. I also use graphics (arrows mostly) to point out specifically things that can help you develop your painting. Go ahead, give it a try!

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