Just a Tad

Encouraged by the Invisible

When taking a course of any kind for reasons of self improvement, there are no grades or objective benchmarks that have real meaning. I find that, even when I'm struggling through something, it's whether I learned anything along the way that matters most. The course I'm taking is written material with illustrations, video demonstrations of exercises that students paint along with and short critiques from the teacher. She also answers any questions we  have along the way. We also see all the student work and their critiques.

The crits are nothing like what you'd get at an art school. It's mostly positive reinforcement. Although there was a pencil exercise that I redid because I hadn't taken it seriously enough. It's not that I couldn't have done a painting over it but it was so loose that it would've been the same as painting without a sketch at all. The teacher points out the parts of the paints that successfully hit the points of the specific lesson. But her answers to student questions are often the most informative part of her comments.

But when I look at the painting above, what I'm happiest with is what you're not seeing. It's the changes I made at the stage where the painting was going all wrong. For example, the wall to the upper left and the ground were much too dark. I had to mix a new color that would fit the rest of the painting but at a higher value. Also, the sweater looked great at one point but was much too warm and violet. So I struggled to duplicate the look but with different colors, remixing several times.

The result of all those corrections is a painting with a variety of colors withing the big color shapes. It gives extra interest without necessarily adding detail. I like it a lot. But this raises a question in my mind as I look forward to doing my own paintings.

Can I do it on purpose?

                                                                                            --Tad

Still Being Schooled

The purpose of this lesson is to simplify shapes and concentrate on values. I have to say that the part of the painting where I tried to add the most detail is the part that looks most amateurish (the church-like building to the left). On the other hand, if I had been selective with light direction, and added a lighter roof color on all sun pointing roofs, I think that would improve it. However, that wasn't the point. Below is the black and white study done before the above. The goal is to simplify the number of values then keep all the values the same as you add a variety of colors.

That color painting is seven inches across, the black and white a bit smaller. I'm currently painting a woman in a purple sweater. I don't think I know what I should at this point, but I am learning some things. I'm anxious to try plein air painting again but I'm just too busy. Besides the course, I have to rebuild my cartoon original art for a convention in January. With the holidays and family visits, that's going to be tough. -- Tad

Online Class Exercises and Wildfire Interuptions

We didn't have to evacuate but we did pack go bags and important papers into our cars because that's what you do when part of your town is on fire. I live in Simi Valley, California. Every Fall we get Santa Ana winds. Sometimes they're hot, this time they were cold. The temp doesn't matter. It's the dryness. They suck every bit of moisture out of the plant life that's already been killed by the heat of August and September. They typically blow 30 to 40 mile per hour with gusts through the canyons sometimes clocking in at 80. After that, all it takes is a spark. A branch hits an electric line, somebody pulls their car off the road in high grass with a hot muffler, a cigarette toss or the blade of a lawn mower hits cement or an errant rock. 

Home owners in more rural areas than my neighborhood are told to clear brush back to 100 feet with no continuous line of bushes or plants leading to the house. But embers can come at you horizontally when the Santa Anas blow. None of the fires were especially close to us, and none were upwind. There was a spot fire that started just a few blocks away when someone tossed a cigarette out of the car when getting onto the freeway. There's no proof of that but there weren't any other ignition points. Suddenly there was a fire behind the houses of a neighborhood. The winds blew, trees started to burn.

Suddenly, waterdropping helicopters appeared overhead, diverted from the huge fire across town. Why? Because this was starting in a neighborhood, not open land, and there was no time to waste. Fire was tamped down in record time.

So it's hard to get stuff done when things are that tense. In fact, the painting of the koi was started and stopped several times.

 

There's lots I like about that fish, notably some of the random water distortion, but this is a case of following a teacher's directions, step by step. We all paint the same thing. If you ask me to paint your cat, I'm not sure where I'd start. I'm hoping that I'll be able to approach things like that, cats, dogs or landscapes, by the end of the course. The rest of the time since my last post was filled with color swatches, color wheels, grey scales and a few more exercises posted below.