What is a Zorn palette?
Join Mark Fennell RBSA as he leads a Zorn palette portrait day workshop at Pegasus Art
BOOK ONLINE:
Zorn palette portraits in oils with Mark Fennell RBSA
Saturday 2nd October 2021
10am – 4pm Attic Studio £80
All skill levels welcome
This workshop will focus on the basics of portrait painting, working from a live model with a limited palette of three colours plus white famously used by Swedish painter Anders Zorn to create beautiful skin tones.
It is a painting style best practiced in a quick (3 to 4 hour) wet-into-wet fashion where every brushstroke counts.
The workshop aims to help artists develop their paint and brush handling toward achieving expressive, yet realistic portraits in a more immediate way.
The Zorn palette
The Zorn palette refers to a palette of colours attributed to the great Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860 – 1920). It consists of just four colours being yellow ochre, ivory black, vermillion and titanium white. Cadmium red light is commonly used in place of vermilion by modern day artists.
The Zorn palette is a great learning tool for students as it limits your colour choices whilst allowing for a wide range of colours to be mixed. The focus is more on value rather than colour in emphasising form. This practice enables a greater understanding of this important element of painting before attempting to handle more complex colour palettes.
Use white and black for changes in value. Ivory black is a relatively cool black and can used as a very dark substitute for blue. Think of yellow ochre, cadmium red light and ivory black as a simplified version of the primary colours.
Mark Fennell suggests, “I use a mix of Winsor & Newton Artists colours and Michael Harding oils. Michael Harding’s warm white is more like flake white but doesn’t have the highly toxic lead content. It’s not as harsh as titanium white and is great for mixing skin tones and has a stiffer consistency. I replace vermilion with Michael Harding cadmium red light as it’s a lot cheaper but does the job perfectly well.”
About Mark
Mark is a regular visiting tutor at Pegasus Art and is a professional portrait painter who works to commission from his home studio in Buckinghamshire.
He works predominantly in oils. Notable sitters include Antony Worrall Thompson, John Hood, Lord Mayor of Birmingham and singer – songwriter John Otway. His work has been selected for exhibition with The Royal Society of Portrait Painters and The Royal Society of British Artists at the Mall galleries London.
As well as portraiture, Mark also enjoys the challenge of painting outdoors, working at speed to capture the fleeting effects of light over landscape. Mark was elected member of The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in 2007. He is also a member of Oxford Art Society and Buckinghamshire Art Society.
Mark runs workshops and demonstrations for art groups and societies across the UK. He occasionally runs painting holidays in Portugal and the Costa Blanca in Spain.
Awards
Awarded the Winsor and Newton painting prize for his self portrait ‘The diagnosis’ at The Royal Society of British Artists annual exhibition 2020. Selected for The Artist and Leisure Painter magazine competition at Patchings festival open art exhibition, 2014 and 2018. Awarded The Artists and Illustrators Artist of the Year West Design prize. Peoples Choice Award 2012 for his portrait of 2nd world war veteran Len Nixey. Shortlisted for A&I Artist of the Year in 2019.
His self portrait was shortlisted out of nearly 10,000 entries for the Daily Mail ‘Not the Turner Prize’ and exhibited at The Mall Galleries, London in 2005. Featured on ITV’s ‘A Brush With Fame’ in 2005, portrait of Antony Worrall Thompson was chosen as his favourite.