Note on David Kassan's Painting a Life DVD

This is probably the best DVD tutorial that I have watched.



Why do I say that?
Unlike others, Kassan took extra effort to film the action of his palette, the painting he is working on and also his model. He also narrated all his thoughts and shared all his thought processes. Tools were thoroughly explained as well.

I love the direction he has taken with his work and the approaches he taken to market himself.
This is defiantly one Artist to learn from.

Key notes from this DVD.
1) He uses Pan Pastel soft tools to block shapes for his drawing.
2) He transfer the completed drawing to a panel grey panel he prepared for painting. He did this by coating the back of his print with red iron oxide shade..  According to him, this blends into the oil better than black he used in the past. (grey is a neutral for chroma judgment)
3) Since he has already done a thorough drawing, Kassan doesn't do a block-in on his painting. Instead, he focuses on planar relationship and color temperature with the value structure resolved from his drawing.
4) His color palette consisted of tinted chroma (e.g tinted blue, pink and tinted yellow) and this expedited the process of mixing and neutralization. (without upsetting the value)
5) He tries to paint symmetrically on portraits and expands outwards.(e.g left eye and right eye )
6) He uses various medium for impasto textures and build up.
7) Grey panel prepared by grey acrylic ground on Arches oil paper. 

His approach to drawing with the Pan Pastel Knife.

Kassan does a thoroughly drawing before transferring this to a panel that he will paint

Coating the back of his print in preparation for transfer

The transferred drawing on panel and his approach. He tackles the painting mostly with a tiny sable

Locking in the planar and color temperature. He tries to work on these symmetrically 

His approach on wrinkles. He uses a binoculars to zoom in to capture broken colors on actual model. He also uses different medium to build up the textures of his subject. 

There was a section to this DVD that featured Varsari pigment. This was actually a really valuable segment on colors and pigment... lesser of promoting the pigment brand.

You can see how he paints in this youtube video below.