In The Studio: Just Paint “Focus on Figures”

Well I am headed to Maine for a two week workshop and I am sorry that some of you will miss it this year.  I will be presenting the workshop demos on a daily basis so you can keep up and hopefully inspire you to join me at the next one.  Here is the teaser for the next series of lessons coming on the blog “FOCUS ON THE FIGURES, FIFTY DAYS OF FIGURES”  We will get started for real in October but I will put a few opening lessons, over the next few weeks while I am traveling.  Keep on painting.Once you get the nice expressive drawing complete start on the face and work the shadow forms, really trying to keep a feeling of merging the shapes together.  Try not to paint the pieces as separate objects, hat shadow to face to shirt to pants to horse to cow is how to think otherwise you will end up with jigsaw puzzle painting, Nice for the MOMA but not for a representational painting.  Apply the color with the side of a round brush it is where the expressive marks live.

I use a light touch with a 6B pencil and try to only think about a good quality of contour line and not so much about the fact that this is a cowboy, on a horse with cows all around that is way too much for my brain at the moment.  Think line, and contour let the line follow your eyes along the edge really look.  Try not to draw what you want to see or want to generalize let your eyes lead you eyes.  It will come to you.  Draw more, your paintings will improve.

The colors are not as important here as the freedom you show with the application of paint, let the colors merge warm to cool trying to keep the values pretty close together and not assigning a color a specific value, like blue is dark, yellow is light, that is limiting and not really going to lead to a good painting.