Painting a Still Life: Fox Skull Study

In this video lesson I invite you to start with extremely limited palette of Earth pigments and expand this palette later for additional hue shifts and temperature changes. By the end of the lesson you will learn how to start a painting with a tonal layer (Brunaille) first and build up form and details with wider color palette in the second session.

First Session:

The goal is to create an underpainting with a sense of form, find relationship between the object and the background, set up the overall key of the piece and prepare it for the next day

Second Session:

How to apply a "couche" - oiling out with a pigment, rendering of the form using colors, harmonization of the piece and finally - some thickness in the lights and textural variety. Most of the session is real time and the last finishing touches part is sped up (last 10 minutes of video).

The painting was done entirely from life. You will get the photo from my point of view so you can follow along using the reference.