Warms, Cools and Neutrals

Here's a quick exercise of a bowl and orange.  I used a limited palette of just Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber and Titanium White.  I mixed my own black by using Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber.  So, in-effect, I can say this is painted with just black and white.  By using a two-part black I can choose to mix a warmer black or a cooler black, or a neutral black.  I can make the shadows appear warmer by using more Burnt Umber, or cooler by using more Ultramarine Blue.  You'll do the same with the lights.  You'll learn to mix shadows cool and your lights warm.  Or, vice-versa: lights cool and shadows warm. 
Also note how the upper right corner is a neutral gray.  Don't forget that neutrals can be an integral part of the overall design (neutral: meaning, lacking color or an assigned temperature).  By having neutral shapes, you are taking the viewer's eye away from the neutrals and leading the viewer's eye toward the more predominant color shapes.   Learn to design your neutral shapes along with your warm and cool shapes.

Another useful exercise is to paint a still life made up of all white objects.  For example, a white mug, with a white napkin, on a white tablecloth, on a white table, with a white background... and so-on. This will push you to see the subtlety of hues within whites.  Yes, everything is apparently white... but what color white is it?  It will be some varying degree of temperature (cool-neutral-warm). 

This is a great way to develop your eye to see warm vs. cool, the extremes of their relationship and the use of neutrals. 

Class Demo--Painting Without Color

Color Can Sometimes Be Overwhelming

Alright, so color is not working out. It seems the more you mix color, the more you continue to further aggravate yourself with every muddy decision. What's the solution? Don't use color... for now.

Students commonly make the mistake of attempting to tackle all of their painting issues at the same time. This is a sure way to quickly become overwhelmed. Instead, I recommend identifying each issue one at a time. Solve it, then move on to the next. Be honest about identifying your issues and create new tactics to solve them. Change the way you are looking at things, i.e., if being trapped inside your box is giving you nothing but grief... step outside of it.  

Try painting with just black and white. This frees you up so that now you may afford the luxury of focusing on other issues, such as: value, edge intensity and paint thickness.  You'll become more sensitive to color after having denied yourself of it.  When you begin to slowly introduce color again, you'll begin do so with a greater appreciation and sensitivity for cools and warms, value and intensity, and how little color is needed for something to be perceived as colorful. A whole new world begins to open up and you soon forget your previous frustrations.

The moral of the story... simplify.  I really can't say it enough.  Painting is about simplifying. Simplify your approach, your actions, your thoughts, your problems, your way of seeing... simplify everything, K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid).

"Never increase beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything."
                                                                     -William of Ockman (1285-1349)

Painting Picasso

Zach portrait example

Class Demo • Oil Portrait

Recollections from our classroom demonstration:

• Start off the painting by holding back from going too dark at the beginning.  You can always go darker or lighter later on, but for now, practice restraint.  I like to start off a value or two lighter than my darkest dark.  Treat the lights in the same manner, painting them a value or two darker than the final value you plan to end up with.  I'll lighten things as I go, saving the darkest darks and the lightest lights for the very end.  Remember to simplify you values.  I like to brake things down into 3 elements. You only need to be concerned with darks, mid-tones and lights.

•  Get a feel for transparent paint and opaque paint.  At the beginning of a painting, I like to start off with washy/transparent paint, using turpentine and/or linseed oil--or just Liquin.  As I develop the painting, I progressively use less medium and get more and more thick with my paint strokes (using little to no medium toward the end when I'm gobbing on my highlights).  I'll try my best to preserve my darks.  However, if I do go back into them, I do so with transparent paint.  Thick paint for the lights and transparent paint for the darks.  This way, when the painting is completed, the dark brushstrokes won't catch the light that is shining on the painting and the light brushstrokes will.

•  Tip for how to paint glasses: I like to paint them in toward the middle/end of the painting after I have my basic features of the face blocked-in.  Reason being, I can paint the skull structure and flesh in first without having to worry about the glasses getting in the way. And after putting the glasses in toward the end, I can then afford to paint around the outside of the glasses, if needed.  This allows me to redefine varying edge intensities around the rim of the glasses and more accurately render the thickness of the frame, if needed.  As a final touch, I may add the shiny highlights of the glasses at the very end (if they're not too distracting and don't take away from my overall intent of the painting).

Class Demo -- Painting Paints

Today's lesson:
Painting is about simplifying what you are looking at.  Simply said, it is however one of the most difficult skills for students to realize and a crucial part of learning how to "see" as a painter.  With this demonstration, my main objective was to show the student how to block-in a drawing without using contour lines, and instead, using large broad brushstrokes to form blocks of shapes existing by way of color and value.  This approach to drawing will help you simplify.

I first grouped the three tubes of paint and painted them as one large shape, much like a silhouette (I included the cast shadow as part of the silhouette).  After blocking-in my shape, I then treated the background as a shape and blocked it in.  I now have two shapes--the shape of the paint tubes vs. the shape of the background.  I then proceeded to paint the smaller shape of the cast shadow within the larger paint tubes shape... now I have three shapes.

Next, I continued to brake-down the paint tubes shape into three individual shapes, then, blocked-in the smaller shapes within.  I identified these shapes within as being: shapes of color, shapes of blacks, and shapes of whites.  I now continue on this path of creating smaller shapes within larger ones, where needed.  But before I do, I will step back from my canvas and investigate how I am to go about orchestrating my shapes.  Meaning, now that I can objectively see my shapes in a more simplified manner, I can now better plan out which shapes I want to emphasize and which shapes I choose to understate.  I can do this by making certain shapes more or less colorful, darker or lighter in value, or softer or harder edge intensity.  I can also make objects recede by introducing more of the background color and value into that object.

 Keep in mind that you want a certain amount of mystery to what you are painting.  Meaning, you don't want to have to spell out every detail, only those which you find the need to do so... leaving other details to the viewer's imagination.  Implying detail, is another way of saying it.  I target and go after those features or characteristics which describe or capture the essence of whatever it is I'm painting... much like a caricaturist–or, reference Rembrandt's sketches and you'll see what I mean.

March 15th—Painting Demo of Nick Georgiou

This exercise focuses on the beginning stages of a painting and what factors need to be analyzed when developing one's own process.  An artist will want to create a strong beginning, or foundation, in regard to his or her philosophies in order to set themselves up for a successful journey.  Having a strong idea of one's own approach, intent, mood, technique, and other considerations must be made well before ever picking up a brush.  It is not enough to set out and just make a pretty image or render something realistically.  What is key, and what makes it art, is infusing your subject with emotional content, your skew on the world, your unique perspective on how you see... this is what makes art profound and this is how an artist connects with other human beings.  

With this in mind, it is important that the artist connects with their process and establishes some kind of clear internal language or dialog.  Becoming familiar with one's voice and developing it, is the core foundation of art in general.  If a student adopts these concerns, then he/she will no longer hinge their expectations on the ultimate result... rather, the process of discovery is what becomes of importance.  Many times a student will tell me, "I want to know how to do it the right way... what I'm doing is wrong.".  In response, I would have to say that there really isn't a "wrong" or a "right" way to create art.  However, I do strongly believe that if you are not being honest with what you are doing, not following your true intentions, not objectively seeing what you are looking at, and not being true to your inner artistic voice and not following your instincts... then I would have to admit that there is a "wrong" way to what it is your doing.  Point made, when it comes to technique... it is entirely up to you.  There's no wrong way to create your own language.  Perhaps what is wrong, is that technique has trumped your concerns when intent and idea should be the main focus.  

Here are a few things you'll want to investigate when developing a process for yourself:

• Sketching-in the drawing: 

            Think about... rather feel... how you like to make your marks.  Do you like to make swooping lines or shaky lines?  Or, maybe you choose to make no lines at all, and instead, you prefer to block-in shapes with a large brush.  Or, do you like to use a small brush?  Do you like to use poignant color for your underpainting?  Do you need an underpainting?  Do you like to start with a washy sketch then followup your lines with bolder darker strokes, or do you like to establish a tight drawing from the get-go?  Do you choose to use pencil, charcoal or paint?  Establish a basis of questioning that you would like to find the answers to. 

• Blocking in your shapes:

             Look at your shapes as being abstract.  No matter if you're painting a portrait, landscape or still life, you will want to pay attention to how transparent or opaque you like to apply your paint in this sketchy blocking-in phase.  Reduce and simplify not only the dark shapes, but also the shapes made by the lights.  You will find negative as well as positive shapes.  You can then design your shapes accordingly... along with designing colors and values.    

Other tips:

• Simplify what you are looking at and reduce it to three elements... then two, then one.  This applies to value, shapes, depth, color, etc.  

• Don't forget to be expressive and tell the story of how you see what it is you are looking at.  Feel what you are doing.  Maybe this story is just told to yourself and no one else, but there needs to be some kind of "idea" or direction to what you have in mind or what you want to accomplish. 

• Forget about the end product.  It is not important.  Act as though you are discovering new things you've never discovered before. 

• Be expressive.

• Tap in to your child self.  Paint from your gut and with your instincts.  Think of physical ways to help you do this.  You may want to hold your paintbrush, not like a pencil, at the end and grip it with your hand.  Paint using your arm and not your wrist or fingers.  

• Step back and distance yourself from your painting as often as possible.  You'll want to do this to get an idea of the painting as a whole, looking at it from an overall standpoint. 

• Experiment with color, line work, opening yourself up to discovery—especially at the beginning stages. 

Artist of the week—Marie Louise Motesiczky, oil 1937

Here's a good example of how painting instinctually and with a strong foundation can yield masterful results.  You can see everything talked about in my previous post, all in this one little painting.  It's that easy!