PAINTING TIPS from TOM BROWN

Funny story. My sketches have gotten smaller than ever. But the ideas are even bigger. Here’s what happened.
     I always carry a small notepad in my pocket. Everybody who knows me knows that. And I sketch constantly with it. Everywhere I go. People, scenery, whatever. In pencil.
     But today that changed. I desperately wanted to capture the range of colors in this setting and didn’t have time to do it right.
     So I did it wrong. All wrong. And guess what; it came out great!  
     I didn’t have my usual “stealth kit” for painting on the fly, but I did have the Altoid tin palette that’s part of it. And it’s always loaded with wet paint. So I painted right on my 3x5 notepad sketch.
     This is one of the smallest oil studies I’ve done. And it came out great. It really caught the full range of hues I wanted in this quick study. Photos record the literal details of a scene but they never really capture the subtleties of color that you can get by doing a color study then and there.
     I thought this was worth sharing; some other artists might want to try this just for fun. And it is fun.
     This is a 3x5 oil study on notepaper, painted over the quick pencil sketch I started with.
     Tom Brown
     tombrownstudio@gmail.com    

#pleinair #sketch #oilpainting #colorstudy #urbansketch #impressionist