What do we know about red? It’s one of the three primary colors and it's the most fun to paint with. Primaries can’t be mixed from other colors, to paint red we need a red pigment. Paint manufacturers produce a huge variety of red pigments, but are we going to buy every single shade we see in nature or in our reference photos? Of course not, we are going to start with a base pigment and then modify it by mixing with other colors that we already have on our palette. If you want to better understand how to choose watercolor pigments in general and red ones in particular, what properties to look for, how many you might need, how to use reds to show three-dimensional objects on a flat sheet of paper, this course is for you. In easy-to-follow demonstrations I will show how to mix and paint juicy, radiant red without making it dull or muddy. Our subjects will be very juicy too, we will be painting vegetables.

After you completed class exercises and figured out which reds you already have and how they will behave when mixed with other colors, the course project will be to paint something red. You can use one of the photos I provided in the class materials, paint some red vegetables from life, or venture into fruit or flowers. See you in class!