FALL 2014 ACRYLIC CLASS WEEK 5

Acrylic Class Project: Cloud Study Finale

In our last class I basically finished up our cloud study and how you finish up your own painting is as important as how you start a painting. You have all heard me say many times over to stand back and look at your painting especially when you are getting close to the finish. You cannot judge how your painting will look when you are standing right on top of it. Some things that look horrible close up actually look great when you stand back and see the overall effect to your painting and visa versa.

When you stand back and look at your painting and you see something you really don’t like, now is the time to change it before you go thru all the work of adding highlights and detail then have to do them over again, check your reference photo to see if there is anything else you need to change to make it the way you want. I had this problem with my painting with one of the distant mountains that I thought I made too tall and I didn’t like the shape where I had it and I didn’t really like the color of that ridge either. Rather than painting it out with gesso and starting all over again, I just re-sketched my mountain so I had a size and shape I liked better then I went into that gray mix (yes, I still have some of that original gray I mixed on the first day left over) to that I added in some more blue and purple do darken it to a value close to what was behind the mountain and painted out the part of the mountain I didn’t like, blending that color into the existing color with dry brush. There were also some clouds behind the mountain that I needed to put back in so I worked wet into wet adding touches of my white with a touch of orange (that was a left over as well) and touches of gray to re-create the clouds then let it dry before re-shaping the tops of the mountain and changing the color a bit.

While that was drying, I did a similar thing up in my clouds to re-shape some areas I didn’t like, adding some of the dark color to create separations between clouds and also to create pockets of dark where I can put contrast when I am detailing the clouds. These things need to get done so I can finish my highlighting.

With the mountains and the clouds more to my liking, I could start some of the highlighting of the mountain ranges that weren’t affected. The next closest ridge I used a mix of sap green, a touch of yellow and a bit of the gray to dull the color. Remember, it is still in the distance so I don’t want my colors too intense or bright which is why I added the gray, it should be a much lighter color than what you have – at least 3 values lighter -  and you can use either your #4 flat bristle brush or a #4 flat sable brush, which ever you feel more comfortable with then thing about what you are painting: you are painting the tops of ridges and shelves and rocks and bowl that are up where the sunlight can hit them. Don’t cover up all of your dark color, that becomes the shadows of crevasses and dips or the back side of the mountain, it is a good thing. Remember, the light is coming in from the upper left hand side so it will be the left sides of things that get the highlight.

The closer meadow I used sap green, yellow touches of white (gesso) and touches of orange  along with some of the mud that was on my brush for the color that was on the top of the hill and as I went to the sides and down the side, I added some Hooker’s green and touches of blue to create shadows. There is some dirt on the right hand side I used some burnt sienna with touches of purple and orange, you don’t want this too bright because it is in the shadow of the hill. Once again don’t cover everything, you want to leave the darker under painting as the shadows for the crevasses and texture created by erosion, you can even suggest rocks and out crops by just highlighting a shape and leaving the dark.

The dark corner with the pine trees on the right don’t need a lot of highlight to suggest a forest of trees, you can use the green mix you were just using add a bit more Hooker’s green and maybe a touch of yellow then using the sharp edge of your brush, make a series of overlapping, vertical strokes. If this dries to dark, you may have to go over it again with a bit lighter color but as always, don’t cover everything, the colors that are underneath act as trees in the shadows and gives texture and depth to your painting.

While all of that was drying, I went back in and to the mountains I re-shaped and cleaned up the top edge with a mix of the gray, a little burnt sienna, purple and a touch of white to lighten it just a little. I wanted a soft purpley gray. To make the highlight for it I added a bit more white and it was done.

Now to finish the clouds. If you don’t have any of the gray mixed, re-mix it same goes for the soft white (white with a tiny touch of orange in it), you are also going to need some clean pure white, if you use the titanium, you may have to go over the white areas again because titanium can be a bit transparent and dry darker which is why I use gesso. I also finally cleaned my brush out as best I could so I didn’t have any other colors to contaminate the white.

I was using my #4 flat bristle brush and my reference photo was right where I could see it and I referred to it often during this process. Knowing where your light source is at this point is critical: Upper left and slightly behind the clouds, that is what give it the dramatic rim lighting. All of my highlights will be either on the top or coming down part of the left side, not everything is going to have a highlight, please look at the reference photo before you start this process and really LOOK at where the very brightest parts of the clouds are.

I picked up a good dollop of straight gesso starting at the top of my clouds I started creating the top shapes of the clouds, as I worked this color back to the grayer areas, I picked up touches of the soft, orange white and gray to blend it into what is already there. This was wet into wet so you need to work on one section at a time. Please don’t just line the clouds with white, think about how the clouds are bubbling and churning as they build up, the shapes are very irregular. Sometimes it is only a little sliver of bright white, other places soft, puffy white tops, the reference photo will have all the information you will need to finish up, just don’t overdo the white because you don’t want to lose all the deep grays.

The last thing I did was highlight the trees in the corner. They are closer to us so we may see more color. The area should have been under painted with a dark green color, but we can highlight with yellows and oranges even some reds if you want to make it look like early fall. Trees are a lot like clouds in that they have clumps that give the tree its shape, the photo didn’t show this very well so you may have to do some of your own research to see the clumps and how they connect with other clumps or stand out on their own.

I did clean the brush again so I would get clean color (#4 bristle still) and I mixed a bright green with sap green, yellow and a touch of white then I smashed my brush into the palette to make the bristle fan out. I do this instead of using a fan brush because a fan can give you too regular a shape and make you trees look stenciled in. By just gently tapping the brush to the tops of where I want clumps I can create highlights in the trees. Don’t forget to join clumps together it shouldn’t look like colored cotton balls stuck to the tree. If you want to suggest that the trees are changing color you can tap in pure yellow or orange or red just don’t get too carried away, the clouds are the feature and the bright colors can distract the viewer from all your hard work in the clouds.

Finish this up the way you want to. If you want to add a deer or a bear on the meadow that would be fine just remember that it won’t be a big animal because of the distance, there also won’t be much detail in it. You can also put in some closer trees if you want to frame in the right side. Whatever you do, don’t overdo it, it needs to support the rest of the painting. Sketch it in with your charcoal first, it you don’t like it you can wipe it off and try again, the choice to add something else is yours, you do not need to do any more if you don’t want to.

At this point the purpose of the project is done though I may finish up my painting in class as I see things I would like to add to it. Please have something you want to paint ready for class I can help you get started and I will do mini demos as needed. See you in class.

2014 Fall Acrylic class Week 4

FALL ACRYLIC CLASS PROJECT: Cloud Study

We are getting close to the end of this project so we can start to be a bit more choosey about what we are doing. First we still need to brighten the cloud tops and get the final shapes to our clouds (remember: Nothing is done unless you think it is done. If you need to change something at any point, you are allowed) and to get our foreground under painted. I will finish mine up next week as many in the class are still working on getting their clouds in, I don’t want to be too much ahead of all of you.

If you don’t have any of the medium dark gray mixed you will need to mix some more gray, you are also going to need some more of the tinted white/gesso. I mixed my gesso about 2 tsp worth to a drop about the size of 3 grains of rice to get a soft warm white. I had started out with just about a tsp of gesso but even that small amount of orange made it too orange so I had to add more gesso. You just want a tint. I worked back and forth between these colors, if I wanted it lighter I used the white, if I wanted to blend into other parts of the clouds I added gray but these were not the only colors I used another reason to have a palette that you can put ALL your colors out on because you never know when you will want to use say a touch of red or green. Yes, these colors are in the clouds and yes, you can add them carefully.

I started out using my #4 flat bristle brush, I picked up some of the soft white I mixed and worked it into the bristles then slightly wiped the excess off, this will be a dry brush technique so be sure that all excess water is off your brush as well as excess paint. Starting near the top edge of the cloud using overlapping circular strokes, create the top sunlit tops of the clouds. Pressure on your brush will mean everything at this point: More pressure means more paint comes off your brush, lighter pressure will give you soft wispy edges and blends.

As you move back towards the darker parts of the cloud you can pick up some gray and lightly blend it into the white, just don’t blend so much you ruin the white top or you will have to do it again. Also, you need to know when to stop. I saw many of you continuing to blend until you lost all the dark and the light so you had a gray blob in your sky. Or you used too much white and lost all the shape. PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE, LOOK at your reference photo while you are doing this, understand what you are painting BEFORE you start painting, this will save you a lot of time and frustration correcting your painting later.

You can add colors while you are doing this part of the clouds but think about what you are doing first (I know, again with all the thinking), think about the colors you associate with the temperature of light. When you think of warm things you think red, orange and yellows when you think cool or cold you think blues, greens and purples this will help you decide what colors go where. We already know that blue and purple are our natural shadow colors but you can also add some Hooker’s green (it is a cooler green than sap), or some soft lavenders or pale blues in the grayer and darker tones of the clouds, even touches of crimson in the shadows might be present. In the sunlit areas more touches of orange or yellow or pink. When you add these colors it is very dry brush with very little pressure. You just want a hint of color to add more life to your clouds so they don’t look so monochromatic.

Take your time finishing your clouds and look at your reference photo often. Keep the lighter areas to the top and left sides of the clouds, vary the size of the lighter areas, I saw a lot of stripes around clouds and if you look at the photo you will see a different story. Good luck.

The last thing we did was to under paint out foreground mountain tops. I sketched in my mountain ranges with my soft vine charcoal and I had about 4 layers of ridges from back to front, these ridges just need to have an interesting shape, you do not need to copy what is there exactly because it is hard to see unless you are on a computer, if you have some other mountains you would rather put in that is fine, you may have to adjust your colors a bit but they will be painted just the same as I am doing on mine.

When I mixed my first color, again, I started with the gray I mixed on the first day. I used it as a base so to part of it I added more burnt sienna and a touch of orange because I wanted a softer, warmer gray for the first, most distantridge. Using my #10 flat bristle brush and using the length of the flat edge, I did a series of strokes by placing the end along the top edge of where I wanted to create my ridge top and pulled down. Using the end of the brush gives you a soft edge rather than outlining by running you brush along the ridge line, that can cause problems by leaving a visual hard line as well as an actual hard line in a ridge of paint both of which are hard to get rid of once they dry, best to avoid them in the first place. Below the ridge line I just I just scumbled and scrubbed to fill in the mountain and made sure that I went well below the charcoal lines of my sketch of the other closer ridges to be sure I got enough area covered so when I put in the next ridge I won’t have any white canvas behind it. If you need to, just re-draw your sketch if you need to.

The next ridge I went back to the same color I used for the previous ridge but this time I added Hooker’s green and a touch of blue to it. It is closer and will have more color and will be darker in value. The stroke I used was exactly the same as I used on the first ridge, just a different color.

On the right side of the canvas on the next ridge, I created a deep green color using more of the Hooker’s green with a touch or blue and purple mixed into the same pile of paint I started the first ridge with. The reason for this is I still want a grayed color and this “mud” pile I am making helps me keep my colors softer and grayer, buy adding more color and little or no gray, I create a new softer, more colorful color without being too much of a colorful color. I want a greenish color but I don’t what GREEN! All this is still in the distance so it still needs to be on the gray side. (Yes, I know it is a bit confusing, just trust me).

This time, using the same brush, I used it straight on end so I was using its length perpendicular to the top and bottom making a series of OVERLAPPING vertical strokes to fill up the area. This will give the illusion of trees off in the distance, remember to create an interesting top edge to the trees so you have a lot of ups and downs, tall against short, this is a ridge of wild trees not a perfectly groomed hedge.

The next ridge was like a mountain meadow that went into a bit of a cliff the top part I added some sap green and yellow to – yes – the same pile of paint. I wanted a bit greener green for the top and as it went down the side I mixed in some burnt sienna and orange to create a dirt color. The top part is grass so use the brush flat again with overlapping vertical strokes (think grass) and when you add the burnt sienna and orange it will be more of a scumble strokes – think cliff.

In the left corner of the painting is a clump of tree tops, this time you will mix in a new pile, your Hooker’s green, blue and a touch of purple to create a very dark green. You and use a scumbling stroke to fill in the trees but use the corner of the brush to create an interesting outside shape. That should have your canvas covered and we will start doing the highlighting of the clouds and mountains in our next class.

I hope you have learned a lot about how to use dry brush to create clouds and how to blend using acrylics. We will be done with this project in the next class so start looking for something new to paint for the rest of the semester. See you next time.

Acrylic Class Project Week 2: Cloud Study

We are making good progress on our cloud study and we should be close to finished with it this next class so I want you all to start looking for something you would like to paint for the rest of the semester and I can help you get started on you own projects.

While some of you may not really be into clouds, there is a lot to learn from doing a study like this. You are learning how to mix wet into wet (wet paint into wet paint) to create subtle blends, wet on dry and dry brush blending when working on a dry surface. These techniques are used in a variety of situations not just for clouds. You can use these techniques on everything from rocks to distant trees to soft backgrounds and everything in between. You are learning how to use your brush, how to use different pressures to get different effects, creating shapes as you blend between different colors and you are learning how to use value – dark against light – to create drama and excitement in your painting. There is a lot more than just clouds being created here, you are learning a lot of valuable lessons that you can use on other projects. Will you make perfect clouds this time out? Probably not, I don’t expect anyone to create their masterpiece in class, but you will learn so the next ones you do, in a project you want to paint, will be better and that is the point of taking classes so you can learn and improve, it is a lifetime challenge and I know you are all up to it.

I can only give you some general instructions again this time because the nature of clouds is very fluid and that is how you need to be when you are painting your clouds. You should all have the darker underpainting for the clouds based in and if you have some of that medium dark gray left over that is great if not you will need to mix some more (ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and a tiny touch of purple with white to lighten it). Try to keep the gray in the medium value range because it will be easier to make it lighter if you need to or darker if you need more dark. You will also need to mix up a light color consisting of white (I use gesso) and a very tiny amount of orange, you just want a tint to the white. This tinted white will look softer and less chalky than using just straight white; remember that there are a lot of colors in clouds so we may be adding more colors as we create the shapes in the clouds.

Use a #6 to #10 flat bristle brush and use the side of it. The strokes will be mostly dry brush but there will be some wet into wet and a lot of brush blending, meaning that you will blend the paint on the canvas no on your palette. Remember pressure on your brush will be important: The more pressure you use on your brush them more paint will come off it. The lighter the pressure the less will come off. To get soft edges and soft blends you need to use less pressure.

We are not going for the bright whites just yet, we are still working on the lighter gray areas

of the clouds so pick up a bit of the white color and a bit of the gray at the same time (this is called double loading), starting near the top left sides of the clouds using a scumbling or circular motion with the side of your brush apply the paint creating soft interesting edges and shapes in the clouds.

Please have your reference photo in front of you so you can see where you are going with your paint. I saw a lot of same sized outlines all around the clouds and that is not how the clouds are and you need to see that so you can paint it. The light is coming from the upper left hand side so the left sides of the clouds will be lighter than the right sides. Some parts of the clouds are more in the sun than other parts so the light areas will be bigger than in other areas. Little wisps of lighter clouds may be in front of darker parts of clouds all these things help create interest in your clouds.

Don’t be afraid to pick up touches of other colors to mix in with your gray and white. Touches of red or green, blue or purple in the darker areas and touches of yellow or orange in the lighter areas will bring life to the clouds. It is best if you can see this in real life, so the next time we have some big puffy clouds go out and really look at them and you will see all kinds of color in them from pale greens to lavenders to pinks…Even in the middle of the day those colors are there. If you have polarized sunglasses, that is even better, the more you see what is going on in the world around you the better you will be able to paint it.

Keep looking at your reference photo and do the best you can. We will be finishing up with the highlights and the foreground probably in our next class so try and get your painting up to the same point as where I left off with mine. I will see you all in class.

Fall 2014 Acrylic Class

ACRYLIC CLASS PROJECT: Cloud Study

The first thing I had the class do is pre-mix a medium gray color. We will be using a lot of this base gray so mixing a pile of it if you have a way to seal your acrylics when you are not using them, this is a good way to go so you don’t have to stop and remix each time.

I used my standard gray mix of ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and a tiny touch of purple for the color and gesso (white) to change the value. The color should be on the cool side (more blue than sienna) and should be in the mid-value range (about midway between white and black), no, mixing white with black will not get you this color, it will get you a lifeless gray, this mix gives you a more dynamic gray.

Once you have prepared your gray, we now start on the canvas by first wetting the surface either by misting it with your spray bottle or using your 2” blending brush, you just want the surface to be damp not drippy. Using your blending brush, make sure you have gotten all the excess water out of it, squeegee it between your fingers if you have to, you don’t want all that excess water diluting the gesso or the paint as you apply it or you will get very thin colors (you will see the canvas thru the paint). Pick up some gesso on your brush and roll it on to your canvas in a circular motion starting at the top and working your way down so you have a thin coating of gesso over your entire canvas. Work quickly so the gesso doesn’t dry, all of the sky is down while gesso and paint are wet, this is called wet into wet blending so don’t dap at it. Wipe out your brush, you don’t need to clean it, just wipe out some of the gesso before going to the next step.

Next, on one corner of your brush, pick up a good portion of your ultramarine blue and on the other corner just a dab of sienna and a smaller dab of purple, it will be mostly blue. Starting at the top again and holding your brush horizontal, just drag it across the top of your canvas to get the color on, if you need more – usually blue – pick up more paint and repeat the process, you want a good amount of color to start the blending process. This is why I tell you to put out at least inch long amounts of paint when you set up your palette, some of you don’t even put out a decent brush full then you try to stretch it across the whole canvas, not going to work, so put out paint!

When you have the paint striped across the top of your canvas, you will be using big “X’s” and start blending the color down the canvas. The color will lighten as it mixes with the gesso you just put on and that is what you want. Keep working quickly going across then down with this “X” stroke and barely touch the canvas. The harder you touch the canvas the more likely you will leave brush marks, the lighter you touch the canvas it will look seamless. Work your way down about 2 thirds of the canvas, if you need to add more color, wipe out your brush, reload start up in the darker area and work your way down. This takes practice but you can get some beautiful skies with this technique.

Only a matter of a couple minutes have passed since you put on the gesso, it takes me longer to write this out than it does to do it. Please keep this in mind as you work.

You do not need to wash your brush but you can wipe it out if you want for this next step, I probably didn’t. Pick up some of that gray that you mixed streak it across the bottom of the blue you just put on, wipe out your brush then start blending up the same way you blended down, if you need to, you can turn your canvas upside down if it makes it easier to blend. As you move up the canvas, pick up some gesso or white on your brush and blend it into the gray. With both colors you want what is called a gradation – going from dark to light without indications of separations between values. You should have a light gray up to the top third of the canvas. Just lightly blend the edges of the blues and gray, look at the reference photo to see how those high clouds just seem to disappear, which is what you are going for. Now you can let this dry completely.

When your canvas has completely dried, use your chalk or soft vine charcoal to sketch on your clouds and foreground. This is not etched in stone this is more of a guideline so you know where you need to put paint the key thing is to get interesting shapes and edges, if it is not exactly like the sketch, don’t worry about it.

You MUST have your reference photo in front of you because it is going to tell you where you are going to put color and change color within each cloud. I was using my #10 flat bristle brush, if you are working on a smaller canvas a # 6 or a #8 will work for you but use a bigger brush, not a small one. We will be doing what is called brush blending which is where you add colors to your canvas and blend them together with the wet paint already there to create other colors or values. We will be mostly using the gray we mixed up before we started and to it we will add blue and touches of purple to deepen the color and white or gesso to lighten, however, if you feel brave, you can throw in touches of red or green even orange because if you really look at clouds you will see all colors in them.

Load your brush with the gray color but not too much, work the paint into the bristles this will be a dry brush type technique, then start in the middle of one of the clouds. Look at the reference photo before you paint so you can pick a place to start, then using the small side of the brush and a circular motion, start shaping your clouds. As you shape your clouds add

touches of white to create lighter areas of the clouds (not the bright white areas yet just some of the lighter grays) and add the blue and purple to the darker areas.

It doesn’t matter if it is perfect because clouds are constantly changing but you need to get these darker grays on as the foundation for the lighter, brighter areas which we may get to next week. Best instruction I can give you here is to look at the photo and follow it the best you can, don’t put too much paint on your brush, use a circular motion using the side of the brush and keep the outside edges of your clouds soft. Be sure you get the cloud color down far enough on your canvas so that the clouds look like they are behind the mountains which we will do in a week or two. Good luck and I will see you in class.

Summer 2014 Acrylic Class Blog

Perspective:Vanishing Point and Atmospheric

It you want to be a better painter learning and understanding perspective and composition is a must. It doesn’t matter if you are an impressionistic painter or a realist, knowing how to suggest a third dimension to your paintings will bring them to a new level. It doesn’t matter what medium you are using or even if you are using color, perspective is as important in close-up still life as it is in a landscape.

There are 2 kinds of perspective: The visualperspective we are most familiar with that involves a horizon and a vanishing point, and then there is atmosphericperspective which usually isn’t covered in basic art classes but it is just as important as learning about the vanishing point, maybe more so if you want to do mostly landscapes. Atmospheric perspective involves what is going on in the atmosphere between the foreground and the distant background. Even on a very clear day there will be dust particles and water vapor in the air and any more you will have pollutants as well, all these things in the air scatter and absorb the light that has bounced off objects in the distance until only the blue/purple end of the light spectrum is left, more of that in a minute, first I’ll go over visual perspective.

From basic art classes, even in grade school, you learn about the horizon line and the vanishing point but most of the time you don’t learn how to determine the horizon line in the first place and it is an important factor when you are planning your drawing or painting. There will be many things to burn into your brain for easy access and this is one of them. The horizon line is straight out from the viewer’s eye level. For instance, if you are standing on the top of a hill overlooking the ocean and take a photo of the scene keeping the camera level with the eye, the level of the water will be along the lower part of your photo. Now, doing the same thing but you are standing near the waterline of the ocean and you took a photo looking straight out, the image will be of probably the breakers and if there is the edge of the distant ocean, it will be near the top of the photo. In either scenario, if there are objects which will have perspected lines, their vanishing point will be somewhere along the eye level horizon line NOT what looks like the obvious choice of the water level. Remember, your eyes will lie to you especially when it comes to perspective.

 

A basic problem I see – and I have been guilty of this as well – is as humans we like to have things all neatly spaced and lined up, this is great when it comes to a sock drawer or putting the dishes away but in art, not so much. This next statement should go on the mental quick list: As things go into the distance, they become smaller, closer together, less detailed and less intense in color. We will deal with the color aspect when we get to the atmospheric part of perspective but they all go together.

If you have ever been on a very straight road or stood on a railroad track you have experienced both kinds of perspective in a dramatic way. If there were phone poles, they got smaller and closer together as they went off into the distance until they “vanished” somewhere along the horizon, the train tracks did the same thing and the tracks “converged” (came to a point) off in the distance, the ties, got smaller and closer together until you couldn’t tell one from the other. This is visual perspective and it is everywhere. It is how we know how far something it from us, the problem, once again, is all in our head when we try to paint or draw perspective.

This photo I took of the trees up in PV is a good example of what I am talking about. All of the trees in the photo are probably roughly the same size if you walked up to each tree in the image, maybe 30’ – 40’ tall and a couple feet around more or less and your brain knows this. You have all seen trees before, it is stored in your memory the problem comes when you try to draw or paint them, more often than not, I will see students struggling because all their elements are the same size or they are putting way too much detail or color into distant objects because they are listening to their brain tell them “It’s a 40’ tree!” In this photo, you can see that the closest tree goes off the page (yes, I did plan that), the next trees you can see the base on up to the top of the photo where they go out of the image. As you go back into the image, the trees get smaller, they get closer together, there is less detail and they are less intense in color. All these things give depth to the image.

In my first figure I drew my horizon line and my first line, then I put dots at the top ½” apart and drew the lines getting smaller going to the horizon line. If this were a fence line or telephone poles in a painting, it would look very odd because they are evenly spaced. It is a trick of the eye, but the taller lines look closer together and the smaller lines look further apart but they are all evenly space apart. Conversely, in the next figure, by applying that things get closer together as they go into the distance, lines of similar height look smaller in the front and taller in the back because our brains are applying the rules of perspective whether we are aware of it or not. The third figure is how using the rules of perspective can create the illusion of distance on a 2 dimensional surface.

 

You need to be aware of this and look for it in your everyday surroundings, the more you see the better you will understand and the better your paintings will become. Now we will go on to atmospheric perspective which works in conjunction with the visual perspective to create depth in your painting.

As I said above, there is a lot of particles in our air and it does affect how wesee things in real life. Some days there are so many particles like smog or fog that distant things are barely visible if at all as artists, we need to figure this element into our work to create depth. The atmosphere is the “…less detail and less intense in color (softer and grayer)” aspect of the rule of perspective. As light comes through the atmosphere it is scattered and absorbed by these particles until only the blue end of the spectrum is left, it is why the sky is blue and since the sky is usually the furthest thing in our painting we will start there.

Notice the pinkish color near the horizon.

If you look at a clear blue sky starting at the horizon and pan up, you will see that near the ground the sky can be almost any color from a milky white to pinks, light blues, browns depending on how clear the day is, time of day and what is in the air. As you look up the sky will get bluer until it becomes a rich, deep blue in color. The reason for this is most of the air and what’s in it exist in a very thin layer around the earth when you are looking at the sky near the horizon you are looking through the thickest part of the atmosphere which could be several miles of thick atmosphere, when you look up you are only looking through what is directly above you and the air thins out within a few thousand feet which creates the blue sky above you but the darker color comes from the dark of space behind that thin layer. Sorry about the science but knowledge is power especially for the artist.

You can do this with shades of gray to practice however, if you are using color, I started out applying gesso to my canvas then I picked up mostly blue with a touch of both sienna and purple – a very tiny touch of purple, it goes along way. The sky, being the furthest thing in a painting will be lighter than earth bound things like mountains and trees, so that is our first distant plane which is why I used the gesso to help me blend my colors. I first streak the 3 colors across the top of the sky areas (I’ usually do this on the canvas rather than the palette) and with big crisscross strokes, I work the colors together down the canvas letting it blend and get lighter with the gesso. This makes a very simple sky. It should be a graded blue with the darker blue at the top and blending down to a lighter blue at the bottom.

Our next distant plane would be any mountains in a landscape. If they are very distant, they will be about one value darker than the sky (remember the values we did in our previous class?). You can mix this color on your palette but you do not need to wait for the canvas to dry. Again, you will be using the same 4 colors – the blue, the sienna a tiny amount of purple and white to lighten. You want the color to be just a value or so darker than the sky, it will be a soft blue gray. Using the end of your brush, pull down to create the edge to your distant mountains, you don’t want a hard edge. And keep in mind what you are trying to paint they are distant mountains not a bunch of humps or “m’s”. The next layer will be much the same as the first but the color will be darker so you will add more blue, sienna and purple (please watch the purple, it is very strong) and paint another layer of mountains. It is fine if they overlap because that is what they do in nature.

After a couple of layers of these “purple mountains” you can start to gradually add color. Depending on your landscape you can add some green like distant trees or more sienna if it is desert, the key thing here will be your values. Don’t jump too far up the value scale, this is still distance. Do as many layers as you want to do, each time adding more value, color and finally suggested detail. When you are done you should see depth in your painting.

This same idea works for water and flat land as well. Rather than me doing a blow by blow descriptive of each of these two studies (one is an acrylic the other a watercolor) I would rather you look at them and figure out on your own how to accomplish the same thing for yourself. I won’t always be there to guide you so you need to learn to not just “look” at a scene but to actually “SEE” the scene whether it is a photograph, real life or even another painting, you need to figure out how to accomplish something similar when you are painting. This even works for close up still life, maybe not as dramatic, but if you can keep the things in the back softer and grayer and the things in the foreground more detailed and colorful, you can create great depth in a still life like it is popping off the canvas or paper.

Create distance with grays.

I stress again that what I am covering in the time we have is just the tip of the ice burg, it is up to you to practice what we cover and if you want more information it is out there usually with just a click of a mouse or a visit to the library. Have fun and I will see you next time for composition.

Summer 2014 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Class – Color Mixing 101

As humans we are a curious species and we like to analyze everything and that includes the whys and wherefores of art. The Ancient Greeks set up committees to better understand why we like some things better than other even when the quality was equal and came up with what they called “The Golden Mean” we call it the Rule of Thirds today but that was just the beginning into how to create the perfect art masterpiece. We still do it today and there are volumes and volumes written on every aspect of art and while some of it might be helpful to the everyday artist sometimes there is just too much information and proves to be more confusing than helpful, Color mixing and Color Theory are no excepting to the rule. I don’t want you to discourage you from learning more on the subject but sometimes having a basic understanding of the subject is helpful when you want to learn more because it will make more sense to you. This is going to be a VERY basic introduction to color mixing but it should be helpful to you in your efforts to create your own masterpiece.

There are 3 Primary colors and their 3 Complimentary Or Secondary colors, these colors and their combinations should be burned into your brains if you are going to paint in color. The PRIMARY COLORS are: RED, YELLOW and BLUE. What that means is there is no way to mix any other colors together to get any of the three primary colors, you must have a source of red, yellow or blue to get these colors. SECONDARY colors on the other hand, are the combination of two primary colors. The 3 Complimentary colors are: ORANGE, GREEN and PURPLE.

You can buy a color wheel at the art store or better yet, make your own so you can learn about the primary and complimentary colors. You can make a circle on your paper or a canvas and then in the 12, 4 and 8 positions put a patch of your primary color (R,Y,B). Midway between the red and the yellow, apply a patch of orange. Midway between the yellow and the blue apply a patch of green and midway between the red and the blue apply a patch of purple. While it is good practice to mix these complimentary colors for your wheel, if you have premixed tube colors, that is okay too, the goal here is to create your color wheel.

Now look at your wheel and memorize these colors and what is directly across from it on the color wheel. The colors directly across from each other on the color wheel are COMPLIMENTARY COLORS. If you have these colors together in a painting they will complement each other giving a pleasant visual balance to the painting. For instance, if you are painting something with a lot of red in it adding green will enhance your painting more than adding say orange.

Most beginning artists do not have a problem when it comes to mixing mud, the problem comes from how NOT to mix mud or how to control the amount of mud you mix. The way you get mud is when ALL 3 PRIMARY COLORS ARE PRESENT. Mixing a primary and its complement together will get you some form of brown or gray. For instance, if you take the primary color blue and you mix it with orange (yellow with red) you will get a steel gray color if it is more to the blue side and a rich brown color if it is more to the orange side. Yellow and purple (blue with red) makes a great sand color. Red and green (blue with yellow) make rich browns and grays. There are some artists who only use the 3 primary colors with white (oils, acrylics or other opaque medium) and maybe black and that is it for their palette and they can mix any color they need but it takes years of practice to get the subtle differences in color and most of us aren’t that patient so getting pre-mixed colors saves us some time but we still need to understand the reasons behind what we are doing on the palette or our canvas.

By-the-way, all of this applies no matter what medium you are using. It doesn’t matter if it is acrylic, oil, watercolor, pastel, colored inks, anytime you are using color, these guidelines apply. If you ever want to try pastels, you really need to know more or less what you are going to get because you mix the color on your paper by putting 2 or more colors down then blending them with your finger or a blending tool.

Now why, you might ask, do I need to know what makes gray or mud? The answer is so you know how to correct or adjust you colors.

Most modern colors that you buy premixed at the store are usually too intense in color to use straight out of the tube and you need to know how to “tone them down”, greens can be particularly challenging out of the tube and need to be quieted to look more natural. For example, knowing that by adding some form of red to your green, be it red, orange, burnt sienna (which is in the orange family) or purple for shadow greens, will go a long way to improving your overall painting. This goes for all your colors.

Before I close this, I want to touch on a trend in the manufactured paint of ever expanding palette of colors, you now have many choices for a similar color. Blues, for instance, may say red hue or green hue or variation. All this means is instead of being a true blue color it has more red or yellow (respectively) and this will affect the color depending on what other color you have mixed into it. Bottom line is “Do you like the color?” if the answer is yes, then you may have to do some testing just to see how it mixes with your other colors or maybe you have to save it for special circumstances when you don’t have to mix it too much to use it. Art is all about you, if you like it, that is what matters sometimes it can take years of experimenting with color to find the combinations of color that work best for you needs, just never be afraid to try something new or to test your new color because they are all different even between the different manufacturers.

No pictures for this blog because your results will be different from mine and that is okay, we will be working on perspective and atmospheric perspective next class so practice those grays!

Summer 20014 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Class – Values: Black, White and Shades of Gray

Simply put, value is the light and the dark in you painting and all the shades of gray in between. Value and Composition are the two most important aspects of a painting especially when you are trying to create realistic and/or dramatic paintings. This holds true no matter what form of 2 dimensional art you do and whether you are working in color or black and white, painting, drawing or even photography, if you can get dark darks and light highlights with at least 5 shades of gray in your art, you will see how much more exciting your finished piece will be then if you only have middle tones. It isn’t as easy as that sounds and some of us really have to work at getting the darks in our art.

One of the main reasons we have trouble getting to very dark darks is because our eyes lie to us. When we are learning to draw or paint, for some reason we are afraid of the paper or canvas and many times when I go around looking at students work I will hear that they know that something is wrong but they keep fixing things that are okay and ignoring the elephant in the room which is usually they need to get some darker darks. This is why I had us create a value scale.

The first thing we needed to do is learn how to make a dark, almost black color. The reason I don’t use black is because it can kill other colors when you add black but by using a very dark color that we mix, if we use it with other colors the colors will still be lively though grayed in value.

Please burn these three colors into your head because they make my go to, universal dark color: Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna and Dioxizine Purple. More of the blue than the sienna with just a touch of the purple make a deep rich gray color. A variation of this combination is to substitute Burnt Umber for the Burnt Sienna but in the same combination. If you want to see what the true color is take a little bit and add a touch of white to it, you want a neutral gray color (optimal) or a cool gray color (to the blue side). If the color looks too brown, add more blue and a tiny amount of purple and test it again. It is worth the time to get your mix right before you start so you don’t have to stop and start over again, you will also want to mix a big enough pile so you don’t have to keep remixing, we used this dark color for the entire class.

You can use a strip of paper or a small canvas to make your value scale, I like a strip of paper so I can punch a hole in the centers of each value it makes using the scale easier. You will need enough room for at least 10 squares using the white of the paper or the canvas as your white. If you need to, mark them off, I just used the width of my brush for each square.

Take the black color that you mixed and at one end of the strip of the paper, paint a good solid square of color, that is step one. Down on your palette, separate out some of the dark from your pile so you don’t contaminate the dark with white, and then to this smaller pile add about a fifth as much white (gesso) to the color to create a deep charcoal gray. You want it light enough so you can see a difference between the new value and the old, but it should not be a dramatic change. If it is too light, add some of the dark back into it. Add this new value next to the first dark value. With each step you will add more white to the gray pile making the new color just a bit lighter than the previous color until you get down to the white space and you will be done. You should be able to see a distinct difference between the values when the strip has dried going from black on one end to white on the other, you can punch holes in each segment if you want when it is dried.

Many artists will do a value study of a project before they start a major project, even plein air painters will try to capture the values of a scene so they can see where the light and shadows were when they started their painting because light changes when you are outside. A value study can be a quick painting sketch with little detail, or a pencil or charcoal drawing just to get the “feel” of the scene you want to paint, while it is not an absolute necessity, it is good practice and habit if you want to improve your painting.

With that in mind the rest of the class was devoted to doing quick studies of things around you using only the dark color you mixed and white to change the value.

We will be going over basic color mixing in our next class so be sure to have all your colors with you next time. See you in class.

SUMMER 20014 ACRYLIC CLASS

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Spring 2014 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Class Project: From My Garden

Week 4

Our project is getting into its final stages when we refine the shapes, get the colors to the intensity we want, finish our background then, when all that is done, we start working on the finishing detail.

Your painting should be to the point where you can wipe off any charcoal or chalk; this will give you a better idea of how your painting will look. The charcoal lines have done their job but at this point can be a distraction when you are deciding what needs to be done next. You can always put some lines back in if you need them, however, by now you should be able to do without them.

I did show how I can change something I didn’t like because I thought it was too big, without going through all the trouble of painting it out and starting over, which many of you do. I thought that my large tomato was way out of proportion to the things around it so I needed to trim it down a bit. Using my charcoal I sketched in where I thought I wanted the outside edge of my tomato, made a couple of adjustments with the charcoal to get the tomato the size I wanted then went back in to the areas that needed to be painted out with a color that was similar to what it was going to become, for instance: Some of the tomato I needed to erase was going to become part of the zucchini behind it. I took my #4 flat bristle brush mixed yellow, white (gesso) and a touch of purple to match the color that was already there and painted the part of the tomato that was too big to  match. Was it a perfect match? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter, I still had some work to do on the zucch so it was close enough.

When you paint something out with gesso the problem becomes not only matching thecolors you had but also just painting the part you gessoed out, the key to “fixing” anything on your painting is to not only paint the area you want to change with the color you want it to be, but work the new color into the surrounding areas to make any slight change of color or value look like it belongs there. Dry brush the color to blend areas and no one will ever know unless you point them out. The old Masters did a lot of corrections on their paintings before they called it good and people didn’t know until scientists x-rayed them and found different versions as well as corrections, so don’t worry about things that need to be fixed or changed, you are in good company, you just don’t ned to start over in an area, just go with what’s there.

I like dramatic light, if you want a lighter look to you painting or want to put in some other kind of background, you do not have to make your background with as much contrast as I have in mine but now is the time to be sure that your background is where you need it because from here out we will be finishing up the veggies and you don’t want to make things harder for yourself if you have to paint around things.

You will be working to get shadows on your veggies, the light is coming from the front upper right as if there is a window opposite the veggies and the sun is coming in. The things with the brightest highlights will be the yellow zucchini, peppers, big tomato, to a lesser extent the tops of the melon, pumpkin and the tops of the garlic. Everything else will have highlights but they won’t be as intense as the aforementioned elements.

I can write pages and pages on how the light is falling on each thing in our painting but unless you can see this for yourself, my words will be wasted. If you can set something up in your own house, find a window that has light  coming through it, put some things on a table where you have a “sun spot”, it doesn’t even need to be veggies, just things with different shapes, turn off the interior lights and look at how the light plays on the objects. Find the brightest highlights, the darkest shadows, note the colors in the light and away from the light but not necessarily in the darkest shadows. Take a photo of the scene for reference so you can try to understand this play of light: Where does it come from? Where does it fall? Where are my shadows? You will find sun spots everywhere if you just look. As I have said in the past, the more observant you become the better an artist you will become.

That said, there are a few things to be aware of as you are getting ready to finish this painting. First, even though we think of tomatoes as red, there is a lot of orange in the color. If you get the color too red or crimson the tomatoes will look like apples or cherries and when you are making the highlight areas of your tomato, lighten the color with yellow and/or orange because white will make the color pink.

Be sure to have all the stems in place and when you are doing your shadows use blues and purples in your color. In areas where one veggie is in front of or goes behind another, there is a cast shadow that is very dark and where you have dark, you can add a bit of light in front of it to separate the veggies.

Do as much as you can, I will probably finish up my painting this next class so you might want to start looking for your own project to start working on but if you need more time to finish this one, don’t rush we still have 4 weeks before the end of the semester. See you all in class.