Winter 2012 Acrylic and Animal Portrait Class

Winter Acrylic Class Week 2 – Foggy PV Lighthouse

It is always good to get back to class and start a painting and this time I decided that we needed to try something a bit different when painting this project, I think it will be fun and challenging.

This will be out of a lot of students' comfort zone because it is going to be a lot less exact than most are use to but different is a good thing. We can learn a lot from trying something different whether it is different paint, different textures, different surfaces or in this case a different technique. This will be more on the impressionistic side and I will be using a palette knife in places and a lot more paint but the hardest part for you will be to put the paint down and to leave it alone. Most will tend to want to fiddle with the paint and smooth it out, however, with this technique the beauty of it is in the raw strokes and the texture it leaves behind.

I started off with a simple sketch with my soft vine charcoal so I had an idea of where things will be such as the horizon and the end of the peninsula, this gives me a place to start but I am not going to be married to those lines, they are only suggestions and I will be painting right through them or over them. Many of my students still have a problem with the charcoal lines seeing them more as barriers where their paint should stop rather than a suggestion of where something else might start. This might be important in watercolor – maybe – but with acrylics we can paint right over something that is already there so those lines have only limited meaning.

For instance, the horizon line in this picture: I did measure up from the bottom and use a ruler to make a straight line for the horizon only because I need to know where the horizon starts because that is where I wanted to start with my lighter colors but I painted right over it and down into the water to start my reflection of the sky. As I looked around the class, many of you saw that line as the demarcation between the sky and the water and totally left out the reflection colors in the ocean. I can draw that line back in when I need it for the water IF I need it what I needed it for this time was to tell me where to start painting. Same with the lines for the land: They were there so I would make sure that I got my sky color far enough down to go behind the peninsula, I can draw them back in if I need to but they are only charcoal, I painted right over them.

That said, I was using my #12 bristle brush and I will be working wet into wet plus I was picking up more than one color at a time such as when I started at the horizon, I picked up gesso for my white, and a touch of cad yellow light (Yellow) and using a scumbling type stroke (means every which direction), I worked those colors across my canvas where my horizon line was and I went above and below that line with that color and I went beyond the end of the peninsula as well (remember they are only guide lines not barriers). To the (my) left hand side of the canvas I added a bit more white (gesso) because that is my light source but not so much white as I got close to the lighthouse. While it was still wet I picked up some orange with a bit of yellow and with the same jumbled stroke I added these colors into the sky AND into the water (see photo). I repeated this same process with orange and red then just red, maybe a bit of crimson. These colors will stretch well past the point of the land so there is a glow behind the lighthouse.

Now I rinsed my brush well to remove the lighter colors and the gesso from my brush, but I didn't stop here because I want to blend the dark sky colors into the warmer sky colors and well as the water before the warm colors dry. We haven't done a lot of wet into wet type work but it can be very effective in many situations, it is a good skill to have and to practice. Be sure to dry your brush of most of the water or your paint will get too thin.

I picked up blue – I think I was using both my ultra marine and my cobalt blues at the same time here – plus a touch of purple and a touch of sienna. Please be careful using the purple, a little of it will go a long way and many of you end up with purple skies, it should be more to the blue side, the sienna is just there to gray the color slightly so not. I also used the cobalt to lighten this portion of the sky a bit rather than white because the white can make it look chalky and I wanted my colors to stay clean. Again, I picked up all these colors on my brush – you can make a couple of trips to your palette if you want - and with that same scumbling stroke I started in the left hand corner and worked my way across and down, almost to the light area but not quite until I got the rest of the sky covered. Yes, you need to work fast and not worry about it because you do want the light area to still be wet, the gesso does help extend the drying time or you can use an extender if you want but if you put the paint on thick enough it should still be wet when you need it to be.

As I moved across my sky area, I used less of the cobalt and more of the ultra marine blue a bit more purple and sienna to darken the color, you can also use burnt umber if you have it to really darken the right hand side. Blend quickly and be aware of any areas that don't make a gradual blend from the lighter blues to the darker blue.

In the water, you can add touches of green and a little gesso as you get closer to the light area, do keep in mind that it is water so try to keep your strokes parallel to the top and bottom of your canvas and work well past the ends of the cliffs both distant and close and forget the rock in the water at this point, just worry about the water.

Once your sky and water are covered, rinse and/or wipe out your brush and start blending the light and dark areas together. Some of the dark can come down into the light and visa versa, you can even suggest clouds at this point. We will be doing more clouds later, these are just suggestions at this point, in the water you can suggest waves by streaking light into dark and dark into light, just keep them parallel to the top and bottom.

I did let this part dry a bit before I went on to the cliffs but you don't really need to if you want to keep working, I just don't like to get too far ahead of the class.

If your sky is still wet, you can use the end of your brush handle to sketch back in the cliffs, if it is dry use your charcoal. Don't worry about the lighthouse yet, we still have work in that area to do before we get to it, just worry about the cliffs be sure to make the distant point far enough out, mine is a bit more than half way and the closer cliff is just a bit less than half way. Too many of you were lining them up all on one side making your paintings look visually heavy to one side. Be aware of this tendency to line things up, you want visual movement in your paintings.

I used a knife to base in the cliffs and lots of paint. For those of you who have been asking to use a knife you need to be aware that you will be using a lot more paint than you normally use with your brush, you also need to be aware that you can fiddle with it a bit, but it looks much better if you just put it down and leave it alone.

On my palette with my knife, I picked up sienna, orange, yellow, a touch of red and gesso and lightly mixed them together. I want to see the individual colors on my knife so just pull them out on your palette to form a thin swatch of color and cut across that swatch with your knife, it should leave a roll of paint on the edge of your knife. With that roll of color, start shaping the distant cliff. Please keep in mind that even with a knife, the direction of the strokes matter, these are not granite cliffs like they have on the East coast, these are crumbly sand stone and when they erode, they slide down existing slides so the come down at angles in most places. You can move your knife back and forth to create ledges or strata but generally slope them down at an angle.

While this is wet, and down in the same swatch of color, add some sap or hooker's green to make a gray green and add it to the distant cliffs. This suggests those patches of weeds that grow on the side of the cliffs. You can blend a bit with your knife, just don't over blend.

The forward cliff had a lighter patch of dirt/rock and that color can be made with yellow and a touch of purple and gesso, the highlight for that color is to add more white/gesso and yellow, the bulk of the closer cliff is sienna, orange, blue, purple red, what ever is on your palette and think rocks as you knife these colors on. There is no right way to do this so just have fun with it.

The little rock in the water was done the same way, I just mixed a dark brown with sienna, blue and purple and highlighted with orange. I will be doing more but this is where I stopped.

For the most part, this is our under painting, next week we will be working more on the clouds and fog, I don't know how far we will get but everyone is doing a good job with a new technique. See you all in class.

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Animal Portrait Class

The fur of an animal is a series of layers regardless of the medium you are using. To get that feeling of depth in the fur, even with short haired animals, you need to work in layers. If you are working in watercolor, you start with your highlights and you may need to mask them out before you start then each layer gets darker, using a dry brush technique to create the feeling of fur – short strokes for short fur and long strokes for longer fur and these strokes should be overlapping and not lined up like fence posts.

Dry brush is also how I use my acrylics except instead of going from light to dark, I go from dark to light just like you would do in oil or pastel. Since I can't use oil for the most part, I do know that it is a bit different in that you might want to leave lighter areas unpainted until you get to that color but you also need to blend in these under painting colors so they don't look like ropes hanging off the animal. While there are a few dogs like the Komondor or puli who have that "mop" look, most animals have a soft fuzzy look to them so you would want to soften the colors together in oil using a soft brush such as a blender or a mop brush even a cheap blush brush works well for this, just a few very light swipes of the blender, softens the colors together and softens the look of your animal. You can come in later with a liner brush and do some individual hairs but at the under painting stage try to keep things soft.

Oil painters, if you want to use a more dry brush effect, you can let your oils set up for a few days and use the dry brush over the tacky paint that will also work. For those who do not know what dry brush is, it is literally an almost dry brush. It has very little water or medium and very little paint, it works best using a bristle brush in acrylics or oils but can also be done in watercolor using a round brush and spreading the bristles apart to flare the ends out before starting to paint. Some people like to use a fan brush but I have a problem with fans because if you are not careful, you can repeat that fan shape (this goes for oils and acrylics as well) giving your painting a very unnatural look. If you are going to be doing a lot of furry critters, you might want to find a grass brush, I know they have them in the watercolor brushes if you can't find them in the oil/acrylic brushes, they have gaps designed into the ends of the brush to create a grass or fur like texture when you use them with dry brush techniques.

This dry brush technique is what I was using on my dog. I mixed a slightly lighter color and added it to my painting following the direction of the hair growth. I also had some darker color handy so I could start to establish some of the darker markings on my dog so I could get a sense of where I am going with Jackson. I worked back and forth between the colors as needed, this is one of those things you kinda have to figure out for your self because you need to find what works best for you.

On the picture page you will probably notice that I have painted out part of Jackson's face, the reason for this is the more I painted him and got details forming I realized that one, his eyes were too close together and two, his nose was too long. In acrylics you just paint out the problem, oil you scrape it off, pastel you can erase and watercolor you had better have a good drawing because it can be very hard to lift a problem area off though it can be done so some extent. I will figure out what needs to be corrected and have it drawn in next time and show you that it really isn't a big deal to correct something.

This is also a good time to talk about how the spacing of the eyes is critical to the animal you are painting. Predator and prey have different spacing for their eyes. Dog eyes are usually about 2 eye widths apart, you find this by taking a pencil or the end of your brush (I have a chop stick for that purpose) and measure one eye from corner to corner on the reference material you have then put the end of the brush or pencil at the corner of the eye closest to the nose and measure across to the other corner, there should be just about 2 and about 1 ½ eye widths for a cat. Check your animal to be sure because this can very between species and even between breeds.

Everyone is doing very good, I do look forward to this class. See you there. end#

Acrylic and Pet Portrait Classes

WINTER 2012 CLASSES

Animal Portrait Class – Week 2

Since everyone is kinda doing their own thing and in all types of mediums, I will just go over things we have in common when it comes to painting portraits of our animals, because even though we are working in everything from pencil to pastels there are a lot of things we do that are very similar to accomplish our goals.

First off the choice of background is very important to your finished painting and it is something I usually do first when I'm painting in watercolor or acrylic, pastel, I'm a bit more flexible with when I put it in but the goal is still the same: Create a background that will compliment, not compete, with my subject.

All of us are working from some kind of photo whether it is one we took our selves or from a calendar or book, as artists, we are the ultimate in PhotoShop so keep that in mind when you are looking at your reference photo. The photographer was stuck with what was in the background when taking the photo unless they were in a studio setting that includes the lighting of the animal to some extent. If you or a friend took the photo chances are you just took it because you liked the pose of the animal regardless of the dirty laundry or the clutter in the background. You do not and should not (in most cases not all) include a distracting background behind you subject. It is one thing to place your animal in its environment; it is another to have chaos going on all around it. Even a brick wall can be distracting with all the straight lines drawing attention from the animal.

For my dog, I chose a muted blue color scheme rather than the garage wall and plants that were around him in the reference photo. It also wasn't a solid blue background either. Behind his head around his face it is lighter and gets darker towards the corners. I brush mixed my colors on the canvas using gesso for my white, ultra marine blue, purple and touches of burnt sienna and umber. It still looks blue, but it is a grayed blue to go with my gray dog.

I have done dogs in their environment before when I thought it was necessary to tell the story, I just make sure that the animal is still the main character of the story by placing it in a prominent position and being prominent in the picture.

Another thing I try to do is keep my subject out of dead center. It is called "dead center" for a good reason: The eye seems to just stop moving around the painting. While there are exceptions to every rule, when you are placing your animal on your canvas or paper, try to place the animal off the center line and more to a third line both horizontally and vertically, it will make your painting more dynamic visually and more interesting. Remember to have more space in front of your subject then behind so it has either some place to look or move depending on if you are doing just the head or full body.

Fill the canvas or paper with your subject. I can't tell you how many times I find students starting out a painting and making the subject of the painting so small on the page or canvas, it is lost in the background. This applies to all subject matter not just animals. Make the subject important by having it fill in a good percentage of the canvas or paper because after all, that is what you want people to look at, you don't want them to go hunting.

And finally, the under painting. The under painting is like the foundation of a house, it is what you will build the rest of your painting on so I cannot understate its importance. For most media like acrylics, pastels and oils, we work from a middle dark to our lights and very darks, in water color we work from our lightest lights to our darkest darks but they all start out with an under painting.

With my dog, I mixed a medium dark gray color for most of the fur but as I painted I added touches of sienna, umber, gesso (white), blue and purple and mixed on my canvas. this give a variation to the color and interest. When my painting is done, the under lying color will act like the color of the deep fur giving my final animal's fur depth and texture.

In watercolor, what I look for to start my under painting is the color of the highlights. If you are working on a dark animal, those highlights can be more blue or gold depending on the light and what is around the animal. You under paint with a light version of the color of the highlight, that means a lot more water than paint. In the shadowed areas, you can use more blues and purples but keep it light, it is easier to add color than it is to remove it in watercolor these light blues and purples will be your reflected highlights in your finished painting.

As important as the under painting is, how it is applied is just as important. When you are painting animals, it is essential to follow the direction that the hair, feathers or fur grows and that direction can change with the curves of the body so pay close attention to how the fur or feathers cover the animal you are working on. Even in the under painting this if important because you eye will pick up on anything that just doesn't look right even if the top layers or paint are correct. We are much more perceptive than we think we are.

Before I close, I do want to address the issue of black. Generally, I will mix to a very dark, almost black color because it has more life to it than out of the tube black. That said, I will reiterate there are exceptions to every rule. If you like the look of black, please feel free to use it you will not hurt my feelings. I usually don't like to use, and especially, mix with black because it can really kill a color, on the other hand there are times when it is the best option. My pastels as an example: It is very hard to get a really dark color in pastel and not use black. I don't use a lot of it but if I need it I do. Sometimes in my acrylics I will work on a black canvas or I need something black that no amount of mixing blue, purple and umber will give me so I will use black, usually it is something man made that probably used carbon black to color it in the first place so tube black works in those situations.

If you still want to avoid using black, using Payne's Gray is a good substitute. Thinned out it is a very purple-ish gray color, at full strength it is a very lively dark color so it is a good alternative to using black. If you still want to mix to black the above formula (Ultra Marine blue, burnt umber and purple or UM blue, burnt sienna and purple) is a good choice or any of the dark blues (pthalo or indigo or a dark turquoise are good choices) with burnt Umber or Van Dyke Brown or sepia will also make very dark, almost black colors. It is after all, your painting you are painting for your self so use what makes you happy, that is the important thing.

I will continue on my dog next week, I already see some things that need adjusting before I can work on detail so we all have our work to do. See you in class. end#

WINTER 2012 ACRYLIC AND PET PORTRAIT CLASSES

Pet Portrait Class Winter 2012

I am very pleased that my Pet Portrait class had enough people enroll so it didn't have to be canceled, as you all have probably figured out, I am an animal lover and they are a favorite subject for me to paint and draw.

What we went over in class is one, how to pick out a photo to work from and how to get that image onto your canvas or paper.

First, picking out a picture: Find a photo that conveys some of the personality of the animal you want to paint. It doesn't matter if it is a house cat or a lion, a wolf or a poodle, an elephant or a mouse; you want to find an expression on their face or their body language that tells the viewer something about this animal.

Most of us take a lot of photos of our pets especially now with digital cameras, but not all of those images would make a good portrait. Some times you can have an image that has great lighting, and perfect background but the animal is just so-so. Conversely, you can have a great photo of the animal but the background is chaotic, which one do you choose? Actually, you can choose them both. Use one for reference for your background and the other for the animal. Having reference photos and keeping a library of these things is a valuable asset when it comes to your art no matter the subject. However, if you have to choose one or the other, choose the great photo of the animal and ignore what is around it. We are artists and we are the ultimate in PhotoShop.

As long as I will teach art, I will always encourage my students to practice their drawing. If you want to be a better painter, drawing is an essential part of that, even if you want to paint more to the impressionistic or abstract side, it is always good to know the "rules" so you know which ones you want to break and why. Drawing is the base on which you build.

That said, I know that many people want to paint but they don't want to draw so there are other methods to get an accurate drawing on your canvas. You can use an overhead projector or there are computer programs that will enlarge an image to the size you want (Poster7 is a good one and it is one of the links in the side bar) or you can use the grid method which I demonstrated in class.

What you need to remember is that everything is just a series of shapes: Curves, straight lines, angles…They aren't ears and eyes or nose and tongue until the very end, if you get all those shapes right, what they represent will be there at the end.

I like to do my drawing on a separate piece of paper the size of the paper or canvas I am going to be working on, this way I can make all my mistakes and correct them before I start to paint. It is fairly easy to transfer a drawing onto a canvas or paper plus you have it handy if you need to re-establish your drawing without starting from scratch. Really all I do is a simple line drawing with the outline of my subject and some of the more important features like eyes or the shape of the mouth or where a leg comes into a body, I'll save the detail for the painting itself.

However you feel most comfortable getting an image on your canvas that is the method you should use in this class, though I do encourage you to take the time to sketch and draw, it will do you good. Please have your drawing and your reference photo with you in class along with your paints so we can get started, I will be working in acrylic but feel free to work in the medium you feel most comfortable. It is not necessary to have the drawing on your canvas, usually there is a lot to do in any medium before you get to that stage anyway. See you all in class.

Winter Acrylic Class 2012

Hi Everyone!

I hope that you all had a nice break and a good holiday season, it is now time to get back to work.

All of the fog that we had lately got me to thinking about how different weather can change the mood of a painting but it isn't always easy to take the photo you want or need when the weather is bad, so this semester I will show you how you can take a reference photo and change the mood of it by changing the atmosphere.

I will be using a photo I took of Pt Vencente, there is also a drawing on the picture page, but you may use one of your own photos if you like.

I will see you all in class, I miss you guys.