Color and Value (Online Workshop) Spring 2026 w/ Tony Bevilacqua

April 22 to May 7 (Wednesdays), 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM, Eastern Time

**All sessions are live and will be recorded, students do not have to be present. All recordings will be available to students for 3 months after the final session, after 3 months the recording will be deleted.

Please check your email spam/junk folder for your Zoom invite. Our business hours are 10:00 AM through 5:00 PM. All course information and email correspondence will be sent during business hours. If students purchase a course, workshop, demo or recording outside business hours or during the weekend the course information or recording will be sent the following business day.

DEMO: https://youtu.be/Ld5goHRx0Ds

Workshop Description

This is a three day workshop that is focused on exploring color and value relationships. We will explore how having a deeper understanding of both color and value can strengthen our painting practice, as well as how being more aware of these relationships can help us to create mood and atmosphere in our paintings. We will do exercises such as painting in just ivory black and white in order to specifically focus on value relationships, and we will also explore various limited palettes in order to focus on color mixing.

Workshop Outline

Classes will have an emphasis on discussion and looking at various images, color charts, and paintings from art history in order to enhance and illustrate points made during discussion. I will also be doing demos of the ideas and techniques that we discuss as well as giving weekly assignments.

Week 1 -

Introductions followed by discussion of points relating to color and value, looking at images from art history, and a painting demo. There will be time at the end of class for questions, and another assignment will be given.

Week 2 -

Briefly talk about the work from the assignment and any questions that came up during the week, followed by more technical discussion on color and value and a painting demo. There will be time at the end of class for questions, and another assignment will be given.

Week 3 -

Briefly talk about the work from the assignment and any questions that came up during the week, followed by more technical discussion on color and value and a painting demo. There

Workshop Materials List

For this class I will be painting in oils. Many technical points that are made in class will be referencing oil painting, and I will be using oils for the demos, however, the ideas that we will be focused on are not all specific to just oil painting and apply broadly to most painting mediums. If you prefer to work in acrylic, gouache, or some other medium you are more than welcome in this class.

The specific items listed are a recommendation and are not a requirement for the class, they are what I most often use myself and what I will be using for any demos that are done. Additionally, the list I am providing is specific to oil painting. If, for example, you paint in gouache or acrylic, I would still recommend the same basic set of colors, but the surface you work on and the brushes you use may be different than what I will be using for oil painting. We will also make time during our classes to talk specifically about materials and how they can impact the way we work and the overall feeling and mood of our paintings.

Paint

This is a great basic group to become familiar with and use. 37ml tubes are generally a good

size. Learning how these colors mix and interact with each other can take you a long way. I may

not end up using every one of these colors each time I paint, but l typically have them all out on

my palette when I’m working, knowing that I can use them to mix whatever color I might need:

Titanium White

Ivory Black

Burnt Sienna

Ultramarine Blue

Cerulean Blue

Viridian

Quinacridone Magenta

Alizarin Crimson Permanent

Cadmium Red Light or Pyrrole Red as an alternative

Yellow Ochre

Permanent Yellow Medium

Cadmium Yellow Light or Permanent Yellow Light as an alternative

If you’re just starting out and don’t want to buy this whole list of colors right away, that’s fine. A

more limited set of essentials to get you going are the following:

Titanium White

Ivory Black

Ultramarine Blue

Permanent Alizarin Crimson

Cadmium Red Light or Pyrrole Red

Cadmium Yellow Light or Permanent Yellow Light

Yellow Ochre

For some of the demos I will be using various limited palette made up of grouping from these colors. The idea of using a limited palette of 3-4 colors will be one of the key points that I focus on, however I will emphasize again that this list I have provided is a good fundamental group of colors to become familiar with on your palette.

Brushes

You’ll need several brushes of various sizes. Brush types affect paint handling and mark making very differently. Bristle brushes are great, as are sables, and I often use synthetics for sketching.

For the size that we’ll be working in, I use a range of filbert and rounds, sizes 2 through 6. I also use cheap round sable watercolor brushes to blend and soften edges. For this class I would recommend at least one of each of the following:

round - size 2 and 4

filbert - size 2, 4 and 6

round sable watercolor brush (nothing fancy, a $3-5 brush will do) - size 4 & 6

script liner - size 2/0

Painting Surface

You’ll need several painting surfaces. These could be primed hardboard panels, linen mounted to panel, and/or Arches oil paper. I prefer 6x8 inches for sketching. Ampersand makes a great pre-primed Gessobord that I often use. Arches oil paper is sold in pads and can easily be cut to size. For this class you should have:

5 to 6 painting surfaces of your choosing, 6x8 inches each

Mediums

You can use whatever medium you like or none at all, if you prefer. I use M. Graham’s Walnut Alkyd medium, which speeds the drying of oil paint a bit.

Other

A good palette

A palette knife