Outside Lamb and Flag

I had a day of painting class. This time was on making use of tone (lights and darks) for composition. We used limited pallettes to take the focus away from colour. For this I used a suggested "pyramid" of colours: having three starter colours (ultramarine blue, raw umber with some cadmium red, and cadmium yellow), then three mixtures (blue and brown, brown and yellow, all mixed together), and all with an accompanying tint made by adding white.

Next time, I might add a glaze of diluted white paint to make a distinction between the figures and the background. One way you can make things appear further away is by desaturating the colours so they appear hazy.

The picture I painted from is a photo my partner took of people with bikes chatting to each other outside the Lamb and Flag pub on St Giles' in Oxford.