Wakefield Barn Painting

Well happy new year everyone! I have been meaning to post but fell behind a bit.

This is a painting I did of our barn. It's from a photo, done in class, with my teacher Chui, who himself paints like a great master. I am so lucky to have him as a teacher, and of course to have had a Dad that also painted so beautifully to inspire me. I have 10,000 hours to get there, still.

The painting is done with a brush, in oils. I was using cold blues and cold browns for the barn and the fence, and Chui told me that the fence where the sun was shining on it was yellow. I mixed the grey the way my dad taught me (blue + white until the right value, then add orange bit by bit for grey- less for cold, more for warm) and then I put in some cadmium yellow, and Chui said "non!... jaune" and he really meant it- warm, cadmium yellow. He took my palette and brush and painted on the yellow fence board, and the sun shone.

In places, he said, you have to exaggerate the color. The roof where the sun is shining is a very warm grey- underneath is a strong orange that Chui also added, when he was correcting my work.  The hills are white with quite a lot of cadmium red in there to warm it up, the shadows are cold blue, and the sky is a warm blue- ultramarine blue and white with some cadmium yellow and a tiny touch of cad red. 

Chui is Chinese but speaks French also. 

"Pas peur!" (go for it he says, as he will fearlessly paint up a storm).

"Il faut tojours comparer" (the colors with eachother- don't paint  sections in isolation without comparing warm/cold dark/light with the rest). Find the darkest part, and then compare the rest to that. And the warmest, and so on.