Artist of the Year 2025: Masterclass - Season 1 Episode 33 Monochrome Palette
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Today's tutor, Amy Durie, took part in Portrait Artist of the Year in 2021, where she first
00:18caught our attention with her striking self-portrait.
00:22Definitely a self-portrait in crisis or it looks like a couple of rounds have been fought.
00:28At the heat, she painted actress Polly Walker, who chose her portrait to take home.
00:34I love the colours and I love the stuff around the back.
00:37Gives it a sort of real energy and vibrancy.
00:39I think it's beautiful.
00:42Amy often creates paintings by using different tones of a single colour, which she will explain
00:48in today's Masterclass, Monochrome Palette.
01:16Today I'm going to be taking the idea of a reduced palette one step further by making
01:20a monochromatic painting.
01:23Monochrome is often thought about as a black and white painting, but it can be any one
01:27single colour.
01:29And I love painting from vintage photographs, old black and white family photos.
01:33So this is a perfect technique to practice tone or as an underpainting or as a finished
01:37painting in itself.
01:39So in my setup today, I've got my oil painting paper on my easel.
01:44The paper's set with my eyeline in the middle of the paper or the canvas, whatever it is
01:48that you want to use.
01:49And I've got my reference photo right here, so it's easy to glance at.
01:54And I've got my palette, my paints, my solvent, my brush, and all the things that I need right
02:00close by.
02:01It's a good idea to use a dark colour for this because we want to achieve a good range
02:05of darks and lights.
02:07So that's tone or contrast or shadows.
02:10So it's being able to achieve the darkest darks and the lightest lights with just one
02:14colour is going to be possible with a dark colour.
02:17We're going to be working in thin layers, working up to thicker layers.
02:21So I'm going to grab a bit of my solvent.
02:22I'm using a non-toxic citrus-based solvent.
02:27And I'm going to just add a bit of that into my dark brown mix, adding even more solvent
02:32into it to make it nice and thin and runny.
02:35So I'm going to use a sponge to apply the paint to the paper.
02:38And the reason for that is just it goes on really nice and smoothly and quickly and makes
02:42a really nice texture.
02:43So I'm going to dip my sponge into just a little bit of solvent, just to make sure I've
02:47got a nice fluid amount of paint on it.
02:49And then I can come to my piece of paper right here.
02:52And it's just a question of making a mid-tone coverage, which means not too dark, not too
02:58light, just something to get us going to cover the white paper with a light and very thin
03:04wash of tone.
03:06You can see this lovely burnt umber color, this lovely brown color.
03:10It's got a slight reddishness to it, so it's quite lovely and warm.
03:14And the sponge just immediately does the job of rubbing the paint, the pigment, into the
03:18surface.
03:19But the white paper is doing all the work.
03:21And one thing that you want to remember is that nothing's ever going to be as white as
03:26the white of the paper.
03:27Let that paper do the work for you and to make that glow of the paint.
03:32I'm also not going to go right up to the edges of the paper.
03:34There's something I quite like about an unfinished edge and an unfinished painting, so it's quite
03:39nice to see these rough edges around the edge.
03:55So I've rubbed that all in now.
03:58And now I'm going to start thinking about the actual composition that I'm going to use
04:01today.
04:02So I'm using an old family photograph.
04:05This is a wonderful photograph of my husband's grandmother.
04:09And I love this photograph because I really enjoy using references that are slightly caught
04:13in between.
04:14They're not posed photographs.
04:15Quite often when you find old family photographs, people are staring straight at the camera,
04:19they've got a big smile on, and that's gorgeous.
04:22But I like those little moments in between where people are a bit caught off guard and
04:25maybe not posing so much.
04:26And this is a great example of this.
04:28She's hanging out some washing in her back garden in Scotland.
04:31She's got a gorgeous little cheeky glint in her eye.
04:34And I love the shadows and the tones in this picture.
04:36This is something quite lovely about using old photographs.
04:39They're often taken on lovely sunny days.
04:41You get these very strong shadows, these strong contrasts.
04:43You've got the sunshine hitting this lovely white sheet and this big dramatic dark shadow
04:49falling underneath her arm.
04:50So for me, this is a great reference photo with lots going on and lots to play with.
04:55The way that I might start thinking about the figure, you could draw an outline.
04:58I could spend ages gridding it up and getting everything in the right place.
05:02But I don't think I'm going to do that today.
05:03I'm going to go for a freehand approach because I don't really need it to be super accurate
05:07or absolutely the same as the photograph.
05:09I'm going to get a kind of impression of what's happening here.
05:12So one way that I quite like to work is to work almost from the inside out.
05:16So instead of trying to draw an outline and kind of fill it in, which might be a way to
05:20work for some things, how about if you painted from the inside out?
05:25So almost like painting the middle of the head.
05:31And I'm using quite a dark but still a very thin mix of paint.
05:35So we're still working with thin all the time until we're more confident and we're getting
05:38to the later stages when we go a bit thicker.
05:41So all I'm thinking about is the angle of this head, slightly tilted, and I'm just trying
05:47to get the overall shape of the head.
05:49And I can see that that head is going right to the top of the page, so I better go up
05:52a bit there.
05:53And the hair is coming down here.
05:56So let's have a look.
06:00That's roughly where the head is.
06:02And I'll keep going down to the body.
06:14And so that's roughly the figure.
06:18And I'm just going to find out where the washing line is.
06:23It's right up here.
06:28And also, with working from old photographs, you do have the license to leave in what you
06:34want to leave in and take out what you want to take out.
06:36You don't have to paint everything.
06:37You don't want to paint it, don't paint it.
06:48So now I'm going to start trying to define the figure just a little bit more with some
06:53darker tones.
06:54So I'm getting a little bit more paint on the brush.
06:56It's not as thin as it was before.
06:59And I'm going to just start popping in a few darkish tones.
07:01I'm not going for full dark yet, but just so I can see where things are.
07:05I'm looking for this very particular angle, the way her head is tilted.
07:09That's always very important, I find, in portraiture and in figure painting is the angle of the
07:14head says an awful lot.
07:15And oftentimes, our brain tries to switch the face around to looking directly at you,
07:20so everything is symmetrical.
07:22And you've got to observe very closely about what is actually happening and look at this
07:26angle of the head tilted to the side.
07:28And that will say a lot about the gesture of the look.
07:31So I'm looking at this angle, and I'm just trying to get in.
07:35And I can start finding out where this lovely dark hair, this beautiful dark bob is.
07:41And that's going to describe a lot about how the head is placed.
07:50And let's see if I can see where the features will be.
07:55I've got an eye around here.
07:57And as ever, thinking about the face as a mixture of shapes that need to be put together,
08:04rather than drawing in any detail.
08:06And because we're using this old, quite blurry photograph, that's quite helpful, actually,
08:11because it immediately breaks things down into general shapes, rather than fine detail.
08:17So I can just put these shapes in right now.
08:19And then I can find the detail a bit later.
08:24Okay, so I've made some more defining marks now.
08:28So I've got a rough idea of where things are.
08:31And now I'm going to start to take away some paint, so subtracting, so finding the light.
08:36So it's about thinking in negative, almost.
08:39So you're not trying to put in the dark shapes.
08:42We're trying to take away the light shapes.
08:44And we're going to do that with a variety of tools.
08:47I'm going to start with just a piece of cloth.
08:50Now, this could be a bit of sheet material or a bit of old T-shirt.
08:54People can use all sorts of things.
08:55A bit of kitchen towel works really well as well.
08:58So you just have to wrap a bit around your finger.
09:02And then we're going to start wiping away some of those lights.
09:04Let me show you what I mean.
09:06So hopefully it'll work.
09:08So here we go, yeah.
09:10So just by doing that, you really take away a lot of that paint
09:14and start to have that feeling of light hitting the side of a face.
09:17And you've got that beautiful glow back of the paper,
09:19which we found in the beginning,
09:21by having the translucent pigment over the white paper.
09:24So we're really going to use that to our advantage.
09:26It's really great for skin tones, to make beautiful glowing skin tones,
09:30to take away the paint rather than keeping adding it on.
09:33So I'm just going to do some rough marks where I feel like the light is.
09:38MUSIC
09:55Now, what I might do next is,
09:59to achieve even more contrast and more tone,
10:02we can actually use the solvent to our advantage
10:05with this technique as well.
10:07So the solvent will take away even more of the brown paint.
10:12So if I just dip this bit of rag into the solvent here,
10:16and let's see if that works.
10:20So I'm going to look at this collar here,
10:22which is this little hint of white.
10:24Let's see if we can get even brighter here.
10:29And get a clean bit of rag there and...
10:32Yeah, so it's even brighter where I've used the solvent.
10:35So you can use the solvent to your advantage
10:38in claiming back that lovely glint of sunlight...
10:44..coming onto the face.
10:56There's other tools that you could use for this.
11:00These kind of beauty blenders are quite nice,
11:03little soft sponges you can use.
11:06Also, your good old cotton bud for the fine detail might work.
11:11So you can dip it in a bit of solvent,
11:13and then, hopefully, with a bit of pressure,
11:16we can start to define some of these more particular edges.
11:27And tiny little details like round the eyes.
11:30Now I'm going to go back into the darks again,
11:33so I've taken away the lights,
11:34and I'm going to concentrate more on getting those lovely contrasts.
11:37Our eyes are really drawn to contrast.
11:40We love to see difference in art and in the world.
11:42You know, it's what we're really attracted to.
11:44So I'm always very interested in finding those dark tones
11:48against the light tones,
11:49and this photograph's got a lot of that going on here
11:51with her beautiful dark hair and these really strong shadows.
11:54So we're going to go back in and find those a bit more now.
11:57So this time, so we're working with a bit thicker paint.
12:01So the paint is not as mixed with the solvent anymore.
12:06So there's much more paint on my brush.
12:10And actually, this is quite a good point to maybe switch brushes.
12:14The synthetic brush sometimes can have a tendency with this technique
12:19to start lifting the paint off,
12:20and I can show you how that could be for our advantage in a little while.
12:23But I wonder if we switch to another brush, a bristle brush.
12:28It's a bit different from the synthetic brush
12:30because it's much scratchier,
12:32and it actually holds paint in a different way.
12:34It really clings to the paint.
12:36So it's a lovely brush for really getting some big globs of paint on
12:40and just laying it down quite thickly.
12:42It will make it stick to the page much better.
12:53I'm putting in some of these dark tones,
12:54and you can see how that's really nice,
12:57picking up against those mid and light tones
12:59that we've already established.
13:00Let's go under the sleeve here.
13:08So I'm really working with not only the concept of dark and light,
13:14but we're also working with thick and thin,
13:16which is a wonderful thing in a painting.
13:18When you see a painting in real life, not just on a screen, but in real life,
13:21you really enjoy those textures that you see on the painting.
13:25That's why it's lovely going to galleries and seeing painting in real life
13:28because something about the texture and the thickness of paint
13:34gives a certain type of enjoyment and joy.
13:37So really embrace the qualities of the paint
13:41and really be generous with yourself as well.
13:44Use that paint that you've got, yeah?
13:45Don't feel stingy with it.
13:47It's what it's for.
13:48It's for putting on paper and for playing with.
13:51So you can have these lovely raised edges.
13:55And you can see how the thickness of the paint made such a difference here.
13:58It's the same colour paint that we started with,
14:01but it's just the thickness that's making this difference in tone for us here.
14:04So I'm just going to use my smaller brush now
14:08to do some of the finer details in the face.
14:15But again, I'm looking for the expression of the shapes of the face.
14:22I always think with eyes, the eye socket is more important than the eye itself.
14:27And when we've got an image like this where I can't see fine detail,
14:30this is great because I can try and describe the way that the eye sits in a socket
14:34back in the head rather than eyelashes or fine detail.
14:39So let's have a look at this dark shape here.
14:43She's kind of squinting in the sun.
14:46And then this little curve here where the nose curves into the eye receding away
14:52is always really important to look at that little curve.
14:55There's some things in faces that I find really useful to anchor my painting with,
15:02and this is one of them, the curve of the nose into the eyebrow,
15:05especially when the face is slightly turned away.
15:16OK, I might try now as well to put in some of these lovely stripes on her jumper.
15:23And I'm going to do that with one of my little flat synthetic brushes dipped in solvent.
15:28Now, this should do the job of taking the paint off again,
15:31so it's just a brush with no paint on it.
15:33And I'm going to just use it to see if I can create some of those lovely stripes on her jumper.
15:39So let's have a look.
15:46So it's kind of putting them on and taking them off again.
15:49It's quite interesting, actually. I didn't really know it was going to do that.
15:51So as it's cutting into the dark paint, it's taking it off,
15:54and then when I'm putting it back up to the light areas, it's putting it on again.
15:57It's quite a nice technique. I mean, I didn't really expect that to happen.
16:01But this is quite nice about this technique.
16:03You can let these little funny accidents happen and just embrace them.
16:07So what I'm doing is not a faithful representation of this cardigan.
16:10It's almost like a graphic motif that's happening.
16:14So now we've got our monochrome set up, our dark brown painting.
16:19I am actually going to break the rules a little bit,
16:21and I'm going to start to add a little touch of colour just for fun.
16:24And I think I might start with a little bit of red to warm up the face,
16:28just a little bit of pink in the cheeks.
16:30We'll see how it goes. We can always take it away again if it doesn't work.
16:33So I'm going to grab my red, squeeze a bit out.
16:40I don't need much. I'm going to use the very smallest amount
16:43and probably take most of it away again.
16:46And I'm going to grab my small brush,
16:49and I'm just honestly just getting the little smudges of red on it.
16:55It's barely there.
16:57And let's go in and find the cheek and see how red that's going to be.
17:02It's very subtle, actually.
17:04It's very light. I might just go in just a tiny bit darker,
17:07but I'll mix it with a bit of the brown.
17:09And when I mix it with the brown, this makes it harmonious with the brown,
17:13so I'm just keeping with that one colour,
17:15but I'm warming up the brown with the red is what I'm going to say.
17:19So it's still hopefully technically a one-colour painting,
17:22but I'm just slightly adjusting the temperature of that brown.
17:30There we go. It's a little bit stronger now.
17:38And I'm going to put a bit of the pinkish brown into the hands as well up here.
17:47I can't really see what the hands are doing here.
17:49They're a bit obscured by this giant peg,
17:52so I'm not really going to define them very much.
17:55I'm just going to have a general impression of the hands moving off,
18:00doing a bit of pinning up of washing there.
18:05So I'm putting on colour and then I'm almost like taking it off by smushing it around.
18:10Get my bit of rag, rub it in,
18:18and again you're going to get that beautiful glow of the paper coming through the colour
18:22and creating that lovely pinkish tone.
18:24I'm going to show you a technique that the Impressionists would have used,
18:27which is working with brown and blue to create a black colour.
18:32So I've got my brown and I'm going to add a little bit of dark blue in with it,
18:35whatever blue that you've got,
18:38and once you mix it together on the palette,
18:43you'll see it creates a really nice inky blackish colour.
18:47I'm going to try and frame the face with a thick amount,
18:51so remember we're working with that texture to create this nice raised edge
18:56and it's going to pick out the side of the face with that lovely bluish brown inky colour.
19:06And thickness creates the texture, which also catches the light as you're looking at the painting
19:13and creates that lovely interest.
19:17So I've put in some more of those dramatic darks now
19:21and I think I might push this painting on just a little bit further.
19:26So I'm loving the white sheet that she's got behind her
19:31and I'm thinking of mixing up some white and actually painting in the white sheet behind her.
19:37So let's give it a go.
19:39So I'm just squeezing the white paint in,
19:42So I'm just squeezing the white paint onto my palette
19:47and I think for quite a dramatic light tone I'm going to need to use quite a thick amount of paint.
19:52It's not going to be a thin wash, it's going to be fairly thick.
19:55I think I might add the tiniest little bit of blue.
19:58So I'm going to grab a clean brush and I'm going to grab a little bit of blue on the brush,
20:03the tiniest bit, you can hardly see it.
20:05I generally just like to always do something to the white,
20:08not use it straight from the tube.
20:11Just to either cool it down slightly with the blue
20:14or to warm it up slightly maybe with a red or a brown or a yellow.
20:18It's just something that I find makes a little bit more of an interesting colour.
20:23And let's see, what this does as well is it helps to pick out the figure.
20:29The figure pops out a little bit more with this kind of brightness behind it.
20:32So for instance, let's go straight for this face here
20:36and add this lovely bluish white in.
20:39And what you can see happening now as well is
20:42the paint is kind of breaking apart across the surface of the paper.
20:47This is called scumbling, where you've got quite thick paint
20:51and you drag it across the surface and it breaks up
20:54and you can see the colour underneath showing through.
20:57It's quite subtle, but it's one of those other extra parts of interest
21:01and enjoyment in looking at paintings when you see these kind of details
21:04and colours existing underneath other colours.
21:07So you can see that's quite a nice way to suddenly have the figure coming forwards.
21:29I've painted in this sheet now with this bluish white colour
21:34and I feel like that's really brought the figure forward
21:36and given it a bit of fresh life, so I'm quite enjoying that.
21:39I'm going to put in a little bit of the same colour on the collar
21:44and maybe these little details here just to have a bit of fun with these elements.
21:58Now I'm just wondering, is it finished? It definitely could be.
22:02But I might push it just that one step further
22:05and I think I might work into this area here, which in the photograph is a brick wall
22:11but I'm going to make it as some sky.
22:14So we're kind of still sticking with the monochrome brown colour range
22:20but I have introduced a tiny bit of blue now, haven't I, in the hair and in the sheet
22:25and I'm going to make the sky maybe a bit blue behind them
22:28and hopefully that will keep a kind of unified colour scheme
22:31so I've got mainly kind of browns and mainly kind of blues.
22:48So I think I'm finished now.
22:50We started off by using one colour and we started to break the rules
22:54and introduce other colours into the mix
22:57and I've had a lovely time looking at this beautiful photograph of Emma
23:02and I'd love you to try the same.
23:05Maybe you could work from an old family photograph
23:08and try the limited monochrome palette yourself.
23:15If you'd like to find out more about these masterclasses
23:18go to our website skyartsartistoftheyear.tv
23:27Thank you for watching!
23:57www.skyarts.co.uk