What's on in October 2026

Hi everyone, 

I hope you are well.

Welcome to October's content schedule! Here's a sneak peek of what you can look forward to this month:

1. Main tutorial - Black Cockatoo - Acrylic  -  Available Now (today) 

In this beginner to intermediate acrylic painting tutorial, I’ll guide you step by step through painting a realistic black cockatoo. Using seven applications of acrylic paint, we’ll build depth, rich black tones, light and vibrancy, while creating realistic feather structure and texture.

 View Tutorial

2. Live Demonstration - Simplifying Colour Theory -  Thursday , October 15  10 am (ACDT)

In this live demonstration I am going to dive into colour theory using value scales and colour strings to demonstrate the power of colour combinations to create light and dark vs intensity. 

This lesson will be particularly helpful for those who have a hard time knowing what colours to choose to mix specific colours, and how to deepen or lighten a colour without creating a grey or brown mess of it. 

I will show you how to take the guess work out of it using the Quiller and Munsell wheels. I have demonstrated this before in a very old class years ago, so look forward to updating it with new experiences and helpful tips I have learned since then. 

3. Which Colour Wheel to use:

Colour wheels are often very confusing and unclear, esspecially when they should be so useful! I use colour wheels that seperate colours according to their chroma and value. This means that the colours of more saturated and vibrant pigments are on the outter edge of the wheel, while colours with deeper and more nutral colour intenstiy are closer to the centre of the wheel. 

Here's what i look for when choosing the colour wheel: 

1. Listing of the individual pigment's name in the wheel
2. The colours have been divided into the 12 colour families and list the key  names of the pigments for each group, not just R, RV, B, BV etc
3. Contains the most commonly used pigments, rather than random exotic colours that are rarely used.

My favourite colour wheels:

Quiller Wheel & Munsell Wheel

Both wheels show commonly used colours based on their chroma and value. I use these wheels to select the best combination of dark and light pigments for specific colour mixes - this will be demonstrated in this month's live class. Using a wheel as the colour selection tool also helps to simplfy what colours to buy when starting you paint collection. 

Quiller Wheel:

Munsell Colour Wheel:

In the early stages of my practice as a wildlife artist, I did not use colour wheels because I did not understand them, and there were far too many to choose from. I am hoping to save you some time and confusion this month by showing you how to use the above colour wheels (you don't need both, just one will do) to your advantage.

If you have any questions or requests, please feel free to email me.

Kind regards

Carla Grace