In this lesson, instructor Joseph Todorovich will teach you how to create a color study for a long-pose figure painting. Joseph will walk you through his color palette. You will watch him block in the drawing with charcoal, then paint over with thinned-out paints as a value wash. Joseph will lecture on color harmony and color mixing as he develops his study. You will gain a lot of knowledge by listening to his thinking process as he makes decisions on each paint stroke. At last, Joseph will quickly build the initial drawing for his large painting.

This lesson belongs to the course Long-Pose Figure Painting. In this 10-week course, Joseph will teach you his complete process of making long-pose figure paintings – from initial ideas and exploration, to making studies, to the final painting. You will learn how to direct and work with professional models to achieve a suitable pose. Then, you will practice creating value and color studies as the two prepping steps for a painting. Afterward, Joseph will take you through his decision-making process while painting the models from life on large-scale canvases. Since this course was filmed during a live workshop, you will get the chance to tune in to his critiques of students’ works and assignments. After this course, you will have established a skillset for figure painting and strengthened your design sensibility, which will help you create impactful figure paintings of your own.

Throughout this course, you’ll have access to the NMA community for feedback and critiques to improve your work as you progress.