Rainbow Lorikeet drawing.

On Sunday, I attended another workshop presented by Janet Matthews, who taught us to draw Owls last year. Above is my drawing, and the photo that Janet provided. I'm not happy with my drawing; the perspective is wrong, and the bird looks elongated.  I used the colours that Janet suggested, but the photo is not good to draw from, as it was taken in bright sunlight, and the parts of the bird in the shade are so dark you can't see what colour it is.  
I would like to do this again, but using a better photo, and perhaps in oil pastels, to try and capture the brilliant colours of the feathers.

Last night was the third class in the Acrylics course.  Michael talked about tones, shades, tints, etc., and demonstrated how colours can be changed by adding black or white.  He got us to paint a chart of tones from black through shades of grey to white.   Then he spoke about the colour wheel of primary colours, and how secondary colours are made from that.  We then had to paint our own version of a colour wheel, blending our paints to come up with secondary colours, and then blending those with white first, then black, to create even more tints and shades.  I painted along with the others, but threw it out when I got home, as it wasn't worth keeping.

It was interesting to some of the class, but I have a good knowledge of that through reading books over many years, so I didn't learn much.  I 'threw' Michael a bit when I challenged him on the use of blending primary colours.  I said not all blues and reds make purple, it depends on whether the red and blue are cool or warm shades.  He agreed, but he said it was getting a bit too technical for our class at the moment because he just wanted us to focus on doing what we could with the primaries we had on hand.  Later on he said that I obviously knew more about colours than the others, going by the questions I was asking, and I admitted to him that I wasn't learning much.  I said I probably should have chosen another type of class more foccussed on drawing and design, rather than just playing with colours.  I didn't say it in an offensive manner!  He was sympathetic, and knew what I was trying to say.  He said he would spend a bit of time working with me on anything I wanted to learn in particular, which was nice of him.  He really is a friendly and helpful guy - he just approaches art from a different perspective from me!

Our 'homework' this week is to paint a picture of anything we like, using only black and white to created shading.   We can also try to paint a small picture in only green - toned up or down with black and white paint, and including one other green (cool or warm contrast).