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.

Texture

Guana Island  12 x 16

Julie  Recently, I’ve been using a palette knife to create my oil paintings. It is easy to paint different textures with the use of the palette knife. In this example, I’ve kept the sky in the background smooth. It isn’t the focus of the painting and I want it to recede. The mountains have a lot of texture created with heavy paint and dark color choices. I wanted to give the effect of tropical vegetation. There is some texture in the water, but not a lot. It’s a fairly calm day at sea with lightly crashing waves on the shore. 

Annika with Fairy Wings  9.5 x 14.5

Marie  Texture gives a painting interest, mood, and the feeling that you know how things feel within a painting.  In watercolor, texture is created by granulating paint, hard edges, and value contrast.  A lack of texture can be as mood evoking as an abundance of texture.  In the painting above, I used texture sparingly to create a dreamy mood.  The colors in the skin blend softly together giving the appearance of a smooth texture.  The shirt contains granulating paint for a rougher texture.  I included a few hard, irregular brush strokes on the grass to show additional texture, although to keep the mood dreamy, I didn’t contrast the values much or make the brush strokes mimic grass.    The texture in the foliage in the background is also subdued to keep the mood dreamy, but, once again, a few hard edges and some value contrasts in addition to granulating paint tell us it’s plants without painting every leaf.  My favorite part of the painting, the edge of Annika’s wing with feathery edges, was made by blurring the edge between the wing and the background.  Sometimes dreamy paintings can appear blurry and uninteresting, but I tried to avoid this by making clear delineations between edges within Annika herself and including the touch of detail in blowing hair wisps. 

Stay tuned next week when Julie and I discuss color!

Transparent Watercolor Society Entries

Marie  Over the holidays, Julie and I gave ourselves the assignment of entering the Transparent Watercolor Society of America’s annual exhibition.   I began my paintings on January 3, when the kids went back to school, which didn’t leave me much time with a January 15 deadline.  I had known for some time I wanted one of the paintings to be from a photo I took of my brother many years ago.  The photo is wonderful—he’s smoking a cigar and you can see bits of his face smirking through the smoke.  I’ve attempted to paint it a few times before, and while this effort was significantly better than earlier ones, and while I really like the composition, colors and values, I am not happy with the technical details within the face.  It ended up, in my opinion, overworked and muddy. 

Uncle Mike 15.5 x 17.5"

Transparent Watercolor

While at a friend’s house over the holidays, I ran into a black and white photo taken by a friend of a high school swimmer adjusting her swim cap before a meet.  I loved the photo, got permission to paint it, and while I feel my painting is technically sound, in my opinion, it lacks pizzazz.  It just sort of turned out boring.  I’d love to know what I missed in the painting that I saw in the photo, and I think in time I will figure it out.  For now, I will get started on my paintings for next year now rather than waiting until two weeks before the deadline.

Swimmer 12.5 x 20"

Julie Entering the TWSA competition was difficult this year. I had worked very little in watercolor the past year and concentrated more on oil and pastels. In a last minute effort I decided to try a fall scene from a photo I had taken in southern Indiana. The photo is beautiful and I had a hard time portraying how vibrant and sunny it was that day. I had previously painted the scene in oil with a palette knife 

with some success and am currently working on the pastel version. It will be fun to compare the three when I finish. 

Fall Around the Bend 14 x 29

My second entry is of three banged up, but colorful, wooden boats docked in a coastal town in Chile. My good friend took the photo and gave me permission to paint the scene. I am happier with this painting but also put a lot more thought and time into it. I have also painted this photo successfully in pastels.

Chilean Boats 10 x 14

I agree with Marie- next year- be more prepared 

and start early!

Assignment for next week- texture

Back to Basics with Line

Five Siamese 4x10 transparent watercolor

Marie  In art, line is frequently the first mark on the page; the tool an artist uses to begin a piece of work.  The use of line is a topic infinitely important, complex, and beyond my ability to explain in one paragraph. To sum it up crudely, line creates motion, action, emphasis (think of eye liner) and emotion (think of a row of soldiers vs. a landscape with rolling hills) and leads the viewer’s eyes through the painting.  Lines don’t actually have to be lines to say line:  In my painting, Five Siamese, I used value contrast—where dark and light areas meet—to create whimsical “lines” that direct the viewer’s eyes through and around the painting (see my clumsily drawn blue lines). The cats are still, yet full of movement.  The value difference between the bottom edge of the cats and the bedding below creates a line (red) that unifies the cats as one object.  The cats are separate, yet one.

Worlds Apart 15x11 soft pastel

Julie  The main focus of the painting Worlds Apart is old versus new, and line is what helps distinguish the two. The hard architectural lines of urban life are juxtaposed against the organic soft lines of the figures that stepped in from a simplified time period.  At the same time, the lines of the sidewalk, railing and skyscrapers connect the figures to their settings. 

Happy Thanksgiving

We're on a coffee break--have a wonderful Thanksgiving!