Visual Mixing Study by Marian Fortunati

Visual Mixing Study © Marian Fortunati 12"x9" Oil on Canvas panel
For more information, please contact the artist.

It all started when my friend Diane Gold brought the gorgeous Edgar Payne book she had purchased from her visits to the Edgar Payne exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.  (PMCA) into David Gallup's Monday morning class.   We all immediately gathered around and admired the beautiful plates of artwork while David led a discussion about shapes, values and visual color mixing.

I haven't been to the exhibit yet, but I've been really yearning to find time since it opened.   Now after seeing the book, I MUST go see all of this work in person!

After discussing the fabulous compositions and the way Payne manipulated shapes and values to achieve his goals, David set up a still life and asked us to practice what Payne did so masterfully with color / value.  Payne deliberately placed different colors of the same value within a shape without mixing them in order for the eye to blend them together.  When viewed from a distance the colors within the shape meld into the one value and color.  Of course, close up you see the variety of colors and enjoy them playing with your senses.

Anyway, this little still life was my attempt to practice a bit of visual mixing and to try to better understand a bit of how Edgar Payne created such powerful artwork.