TATE Collection III: Oil

Try out each of the 8 colours. Keep your colours clean using a clean brush for each to see the purity of each oil colour. Let your brush make the marks. You want to see how your colours behave when thicker and thinner. Enjoy the fluent marks your brush makes.

Working from John Singer Sargent’s painting; Experiment with mixing light, neutral colours. Using white as a base colour try mixing on the palette and in the painting. Mixing opposite colours together will enable you to create softer, tinted greys. You hardly need any pigment, and more titanium white. Consider the light temperature of each colour, pushing it slightly towards green, or pink or yellow.

Red Velvet. Have a go at mixing some of the colours you find in red velvet. Play with your brush marks and change direction allowing the gesture of the mark to flick and scumble.

White damask. In the Singer Sargent he has found beautiful soft greys, greens and gold in the damask cloth. Have a go at experimenting with mixing light, soft colours on your palette and in your painting. Try to use the paint very thin and also quite thick, finding the lovely slippery quality of oil paint.

Glazed ceramic. In Singer Sargent’s painting he shows off a lovely versatility with using the brush. Quick dabs, calligraphic marks and fluid drawing enable him to create magical illusions of surface. Try to find the colour mixtures and play with your own brush marks.

Now look at a part, or all of the Singer Sargent painting, and have a go at combining different qualities of colour, tone, surface and light. Do not get too hung up on copying but rather try and find similarities. Enjoy finding the colours and a free, fluency with using the paint. The painting of Ena and Betty is full of painterly skill and is really surprising when you get involved in the mark making and colour.