Artist Studio
I like to plan the painting with the end in mind: what do I want it to look like when it is finished? I never start a painting thinking, “Gee, I wonder if I can paint that tree? Or that surf?” That is too limiting!
This week, I am going to show you one of my favorite lessons for learning about complex and varied shapes. The shapes are made up of many objects but still read as one interesting passage of darks or lights. This will help you in getting past the idea of painting everything that is possible to paint about a subject. Editing and interpretation are essential for making personal and creative works of art.
I painted these 3 watercolors for a scene in Rockland, Maine and I kept changing it to get a better more light filled composition. I will post them first to last and I think you will see that the first image is pretty dark and the movement in the painting is pretty harsh. In the
Continue Reading “In The Studio: Three watercolors same image”
These are the last 3 demonstrations from my classes at the Art League in Alexandria, sadly it will be my last in this series, since I opted to quit teaching there after 20 wonderful years. I will be teaching watercolor painting but in a less structured environment with a more flexible schedule. I plan to post watercolors from the studio, both opaque and transparent in the future. These 3 paintings were all focused on getting the values right and really understanding how to get the lights light and the darks dark. This sounds pretty simple but to a lot of painters they struggle with using the white of the paper as part of their color and value and conversely they struggle with taking away enough water from their mixtures to reduce the effect of the white paper, making it impossible to really get the darks they need for their composition. It really comes down to less water more pigment and less rubbing of the paper with the brush if you want to achieve a nice rich colorful dark value.
I have been having a wonderful time in Maine with some of the greatest students in the world, a creative and intrepid lot who brave the elements of early fall on the coast of Maine. We have had it all fabulously wonderful light filled days and windy and cold hunker down next to the wall adventures. But the paintings have been great and the group of oil and watercolor painters have really lifted this workshop to the best ever. We moved indoors to escape the elements and worked on still lifes, florals, and composition and design. Here is my demonstration using some wild flowers and pieces of tree branches, and wonderful new consignment shop pots.
Today I am going to show a step by step demonstration of an oil painting I worked on today, I am sure that it is not finished but it has enough of the work completed that I can talk about it as if it is done. I used as my reference an oil painting I painted about a few months back and I was never very happy with it, although I have found a lot of people like it. I find it to be too clumsy and disjointed so I decided to try it again. The painting below is the first work and the one above is today’s piece.
I want to go over several paintings where I have used the white paper as the foil to make the darker values more interesting. Remember that in transparent watercolor the white paper is the most powerful part of the painting. Learning to design your paintings with this in mind will help you move in the direction of expressive, creative and focused paintings. Leaving random whites in areas of the painting without regard to their impact will diminish your chances of success.
This is a nice little composition, which almost breaks a major rule, I have the figure and horse just about to leave the paper not usually a good thing. As a piece of counter movement I turn the cattle slowly back into the picture plane and head them all of the way back to the barn. The barn in the distance with the hint of cattle balances the painting pretty well I was happy with that. I struggled with the back legs of the horse so I buried them behind the weeds, it works and creates a more integrated shape. This was painted on dry cold press arches paper and it was pretty much painted with a number 10 round brush and a very limited palette of raw and burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, cobalt violet and olive green. This a dry arid landscape. Have fun painting today it is only a little bit of your life you are giving up and the rewards are special.
It is amazing after all the years of painting fairly competent watercolors how hard it has been for me to make a comfortable leap to acrylic paintings. It might be thought that I am struggling with abstraction more than I thought I would. I never gave much thought to difficulty in representational work I was always pretty good a making up creative subject matter from memory and designing a pleasing and interesting composition but with abstraction, the intellect is being challenged and I am looking for a language and metaphor that works for me. I haven’t found the key yet but as with all things I will keep on painting and soon the painting will appear. As it was so aptly demonstrated by the great abstract expressionist “the painting is the subject.”
I am working on a couple of new works and I am posting the one painting in progress to show it to you as I get it moving towards resolution. I really have no actual composition plan I am just working on it trying to make it happen as I go. It a little similar to the action painters of the ’50s and ’60s the painting subject was the painting, not some subject that you brought to the work. I am also posting 2 small black and whites which will be the studies for a new series of big black and white pieces.