Painting - colour matching

Fr. Tim had shown me the other statues on display at Arundel Cathedral, and mentioned that he'd like St. Anthony to blend in with them and the architecture if possible. As this statue is white plaster it was obvious that a stone paint effect would be needed for the statue to fit in.

My first task was to decide on the colour pallette. I created a variety of subtle colour variations of some reference photos that I'd previously taken inside the Cathedral, and these were printed out and cut into strip 'swatches'. We then took these to Arundel so we could choose which swatch most closely matched the stonework in it's natural lighting environment.

The chosen swatch then became my hardcopy reference that I knew would match the Cathedral stonework.