When to Scrap a Piece and Start Over

Marie  I have a basic rule when painting a portrait that generally saves me a lot of time and effort:  draw in one session and begin painting in the next.  When I sit down to paint, I almost always see a drawing error that needs to corrected before I put the paint on the paper.  I drew this painting in a hurry an hour before I needed to work on it in a demo.  I didn't take the time to either draw carefully or review my drawing before putting down my first wash.  The right eye is higher than the left.  I could possibly fix it by lifting and shifting, but I got frustrated, moved to the mouth and hastily put in the wrong shape.  Once again, I could probably lift and shift, but I since it's early and I am already feeling negative about it, it makes more sense to me to scrap it and go on.  I think I'll go paint fruit.

Kayaking with Bridget 15 x 11 pastel

Julie  I picked this photograph to paint because I love the subject matter. A fun outing with my niece in the kayak. We were having a blast and I wanted to capture that fun afternoon together. Unfortunately, in my rush to get started, I didn't take the time to check the composition or do an accurate drawing. As a result, the perspective on my niece's arms doesn't work, nor does the placement and depth of the kayak. Nothing is lined up correctly and having her head almost dead center in the painting does not make for a great composition. My feet, on the other hand, don't look too bad... but not the best thing to feature in this painting either. Some day, I may try again with another photo, but for now, this one goes to the back of the bin.

Shape

Field Trail 12 x 16

Julie The photo for this painting was taken with my cell phone while riding a golf cart on a bumpy field path. I loved the colors and vagueness of the photo. It forced me to look for the shapes within the photo to create the painting. I decided to paint in oil using my palette knife in hopes of keeping a loose, fresh feel to the painting. The path was an important shape and the placement was the first thing to consider when composing the painting. Then the tree shapes, sky and grasses were put into place.  I’m fairly happy with the painting although I don’t think I was successful in capturing the vague glow in the photograph.

Two Men  13.5 x 17.5

Marie  My paintings tend to have single or few subjects, usually people, so I use shape very simply.  My person is one big shape with little, less important, shapes within. To make my paintings more dynamic and interesting, I need to be careful where my major shape lies.  Centering results in a static, uninteresting composition.  I tend to place my major shape off center, paying more attention to the shape of the negative areas (the areas outside the subject) than my subject.  In the painting above, Two Men, I like the triangular, dynamic shape the two men made as a unit, and I like how it begins at the bottom left and moves to the top right.  The three negative areas are irregular and balance the triangle nicely.  This is one of my favorite paintings I’ve made lately, and I have to give Julie credit for the shapes, because she helped me with the cropping.

Color

Swim Practice 9 x 12

Transparent Watercolor

Marie   Color is what painting is all about to me.  Yeah, I know—value is more important, but I love color.  Value may make me notice a painting and look closer, but the color is what gets me excited. That being said, I don’t always find it easy to use.   I love pure, glowing color; however, overuse of color, in my opinion, can make paintings overwhelming and chaotic.  The painting above proved to be particularly challenging because I wanted to include color in the children to achieve their energy and cheerfulness, but not so much that it distracted from the coach, for whom this was painted. In a typical swim practice, some of the children were wearing their team suits, which are black, while others are wearing brightly colored suits.  If I had put all of the children in black, I would have ended up with a calm, fairly subdued painting—definitely not representative of the actual mood of swim practice, but the coach would have popped out better.  That isn’t what I wanted:  this coach loves working with kids and her being surrounded by them is what I liked about my photo.  By including the grays and blacks but strategically placing splashes of color throughout the painting, I attempted to recreate the combination of fun and learning that this coach so adeptly achieves during her practices.

Pineapple Still Life  9 x 12

Julie In this pineapple still life study, color plays an important role to really make the subject matter shine. Red and green are warm complimentary colors that provide excitement and warmth to the painting. The deep orange red background against the yellow and greens in the pineapple give the painting depth and keep the painting fresh. The cool and soft whites, blues and purples in the cloth and the pale purple shadows offer a nice contrast to the strong, warm colors in the pineapple to create a nice composition.

Next week we'll be talking about shape.