Good morning and welcome to week six of the Milan Art Institute Mastery Program.
This week, we learned how to paint a colourful chameleon using the fat over lean technique.
For the fat over lean assignment, we started with a transparent wash which was the thinnest, and then put in a dark glaze which was slightly thicker. We then worked with opaque paints to layer in the mid-tones and highlights. And finally, I learned how to work with a new material, wax medium, or cold wax, you simply mix it in with your oil paint and use a palette knife to apply it to the canvas.
In the beginning, I struggled a bit with the first layer of wash. It wasn't light enough, so that when I added the glaze layer, the whole painting was quite dark, and the dark glazes didn’t really show up against such dark wash. However, I stuck with it, and just kept adding more and thicker glaze until I could get the darks dark enough.
With this assignment, we were able to get a little bit more expressive and not necessarily render the whole image photo realistically. We were allowed to let the subject matter fade into the background and make more abstract marks. This was a refreshing change of pace, and it sped up the process a lot.
We also did a lot of gesture drawing from photos using images of dancers, and from life, doing quick 1 minute gestural drawings. Finally, I did a drawing of a statue using expressive marks which, much like the expressive painting, was much quicker to do than the other drawings in the program.
One of the things I enjoyed the most during this week was that I was able to choose my own colours, I finally got back to my favourite blues and teals and got to practice mixing more vibrant colours and playing with complementary highlights.
I also learned how to do paint scrapes in oil, which was something that I use a lot in acrylics. As I start to integrate oil paints into my acrylic painting practice, it's cool to know that I can make the same marks in oil.
In conclusion, week six at the Milan Art Institute mastery program was a great week. I learned a lot about oil painting, and I enjoyed using the fat over lean technique.
