WINTER 2013 ACRYLIC CLASS

Project: Clay Pots and Chilies

I hope that you are all up to the point where you are done with the under painting because now we are going to start the highlighting process and everything needs to be under painted.

One of the biggest problems when we are doing a still life in class is being able to get proper lighting on the subject. There is a lot of ambient light in the room from several sources such as the overhead lights and the windows and all this “excess” light can confuse your actual light source which is the light I put on the subject. As an artist one of the things you need to practice is picturing in your mind where the light is coming from and how it is landing on your subjects, this skill can come in very handy when you don’t like a light source and want to change it, or there is more than one light source creating a flat lighting situation, if you do any plein air you will need to be able to remember the early morning or the late afternoon light you want or maybe it is over cast with no clear shadows… There are many situations where you can use the ability to “see” how the light hits an object and where shadows fall to make your painting more interesting and more dramatic.

My light is coming from the upper right.

I do this almost as a second nature because I love the drama one can get with the play of light and shadow, I know it can be confusing to my students who are watching me paint because they don’t see what I’m seeing in my mind’s eye, but because I do practice this skill all the time and I observe how light will fall under all conditions in the natural world, I can be fairly certain that the way I am painting the light is as close to seeing the real thing as I can get.

That said, I am assuming that I only have one light source (we only have one sun, so that is logical) and it is coming from the upper right hand side at about the 2 o’clock position, all other light I see on the real still life is not of consequence and I will ignore it. This means that as the light falls on my subject the brightest areas will be on the right side on the outside of the pots and chilies. I make that distinction because the light will hit on the left inside of the two vases/jugs, shadow will be on the left sides and fall towards the left.

More light on the chilies
and a reflected highlight
on the vase.

I mixed a beginning highlight color for the two vases with a base of burnt sienna, with touches of orange, yellow, white and even a bit of red on occasion. The taller of the two is a bit more on the orange side than the other which tends to be a bit redder so I adjusted my color accordingly. I was using a flat sable brush but you can use a flat bristle as well, I just have more control over the sable brush and I won’t be doing any scrubbing so the sable is perfect. Starting on the right hand side, following the contours of the vase (remember it is a rounded, curved surface), I pulled the color in and working across the vase and lightening the pressure on my brush as I got to my shadow areas to blend the highlight into the shadow. Your under painting in many areas will become the shadowed area so do not paint it out. THIS IS NOT MY FINAL HIGHLIGHT this is just the beginning of the highlighting process to create the shape and form of my pots. I was very aware of where the light was falling on the pots so I was sure to paint around the shadows.

The bowl was a bit different because it has some smoky color as well as the sienna color. To get that grey color I mixed my sienna with my blue and a touch of white just to lighten it slightly. Whine I was painting the inside of the bowl, I would pick up some straight burnt sienna and loosely blend the colors together so you could still see streaks of the sienna, looked almost exactly the same as the actual bowl when I was done. The outside was done the same way but I didn’t add any white to the sienna and blue mix so it stayed dark.

The rim of all the pots was a lighter version of the sienna and orange with a bit of the dark color to grey it a bit and white to lighten it. Still using a flat sable brush I put this color on the rims then with my finger, softened the edges because the edges are slightly rounded into the pots and the bowl.

Close-up of the ground. Note that the under painting shows through.

Going back to my #10 bristle brush, and mixing into that light rim color I was just using, I mix a bit more sienna into it and a bit of yellow and white (gesso) to get a soft peach color, using the long, flat strokes and the dry brush technique (very little paint or water on the brush) I dry brushed in another layer of light into the ground the pots are sitting on. Again, I am not trying to cover up everything I did before, just add a few more highlights to the ground, there will probably be at least one more round of highlights on the ground because acrylics always dry a bit darker and I want this to look like sun shine.

Lastly, I under painted the chilies in the bowl with alizarin and blue to make a very deep red color basing it in with my sable brush. I made sure that the edges were very random so it looked like chilies in there and not Jello.

Please try to get you painting up to this point when class resumes. We should have maybe one or two more sessions for the class project so you will want to be looking for your own project when you are finished with this one.

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WINTER 2013 – ACRYLIC CLASS

Project: Clay Pots and Chilies

I want to reassure the newer students in class that there is method to my madness. I heard comments to the effect that “It’s very dark!” Yes it is! And that is a good thing. In any painting you need to have dark to show light so with most mediums – with a couple of exceptions like watercolor – your under painting tends to be on the dark side for the first couple layers, this is true in oils and also pastels. You have to have that darkness so when you put lighter colors on it they will show up. Don’t panic, we will start to put the light into it next week.

That said, I finished under painting my bowl. I want you to notice that aside from the string of chilies, I have not painted the chilies in the bowl or on the table, also notice that on the inside of the bowl I painted it as if there were no chilies in there at all. I did not paint around the area of the chilies because I do not know where those chilies will be when I do put them in but I know the back of the bowl will need to be there when I get around to it.

When I painted the bowl, I needed it to be a different color, this bowl was probably closer to the fire where the smoke was (called a reduction fire) which added blackened streaks to the bowl and a grayer color to the natural clay. Burnt sienna is still my base but to it I added ultramarine blue, a touch of purple and a tiny amount of white. It should be a warm (color-wise) charcoal gray. (If you don’t understand color “temperature” here is an abridged version: visual warm colors are red, orange, yellow and all their variations such as brown [orange family], magenta [red family] ocher [yellow family]. The cool colors are purple, blue and green and all their variations such as lavender [purple], turquoise [blue], khaki [green]). If the color is too cool – to the blue side – add a touch more sienna.

Everything is now under painted.

Using my #4 flat SABLE brush (a sable will give you more control, just don’t scrub with it) and following the curves of the bowl, if you don’t have a flat sable use a flat bristle, it’s just not as springy as a sable. I filled in the inside of my bowl with the color I mixed. Down toward the bottom, inside of the bowl where the light will be blocked I kept it very dark, as I painted up into the area where light will fall, I added touches of white and orange or sienna to SLIGHTLY lighten the area, I am not up to the lightest lights yet but I can start the process. On the outside I used the same dark mixture I used on the inside of the bowl, same brush but I streaked it on following the curve of the bowl and picking up straight burnt sienna with the mud on my brush to add the streaks of natural clay color you see in the bowl.

Once I had the bowl under painted, I now had all of my elements under painted so I could proceed on to the first phase of bringing in the light. I started with the peppers, using the same sable brush and alizarin crimson. If you don’t have alizarin add a touch of your ultramarine blue to the napthol red to cool it down it should be a value or two lighter than what is there. Again, this is just under painting for the chilies but we will be a bit more specific, yet, the chilies are just shapes, the quicker you get them in the better they look. If you try to nitpick each individual chili, your chilies will look over worked and won’t fit in with the rest of the painting. You might want to practice before you do it on your painting, however, if you twist your brush in your fingers and lift as you make your shapes, you will get a more natural looking chili then trying to be too specific.

The chilies go in all directions, they are twisted, curled, turn up and down or both, they overlap each other, some come at you some point away, just be free with shapes  and be sure to get them down behind the  vase in front of them. The chilies near the bottom will be in shadow so add a touch of blue and/or purple but keep it just slightly lighter than your first layer of paint. When you are satisfied with that layer of alizarin, this time pick up either your napthol red or your cad red and do the same thing but keep this color more where the light might hit it, you can also pick up touches or orange to paint either new chilies or to highlight existing chilies. DO NOT COVER UP ALL THAT ORIGINAL DARK AREA that becomes the shadows on the inside of the chili string.

The last thing I did in class is to start the highlighting of the ground around my bowls. I am going to have my bowls sitting in the dirt, if you are doing something different and need help figuring it out, catch me in class and I will help you achieve the desired effect.

Back to my #10 flat bristle brush, I mixed burnt sienna with a touch of white and maybe a little orange for the area where light will be hitting, I will be adding color to my brush as I go but this will be what I start with. When I load my brush I wipe out any excess either on my palette or on my paper towel so I’m not dealing with a glob of paint, then with the flat end of the brush slightly on its side but entirely on the surface of the canvas I make a long, flat “u” stroke. The harder you push on your brush, the more paint will come off it, conversely, the lighter the pressure the less paint comes off so adjust the pressure of your brush to your needs.

I added the light color in over lapping strokes but still leaving some of the under painting show through, this gives texture and depth to the ground, that said, by using varying pressure on my brush, I did congest the area so it didn’t look like a Flat U convention. When I got to the corners and to areas where I wanted shadow, the stroke was the same but to my brush I added more straight sienna, along with blue, purple and a touch of red here and there and mixed the colors on the canvas and blended them into the lighter areas. This is only step one for highlighting the dirt but it is an important step.

We will continue the highlighting process next week, if you have questions specific to your painting please let me know, someone else might be having the same problem. You are all doing great, I hope you are having fun, I know I’m liking this painting. See you in class.