Just a Tad

An Auto Graveyard with a Limited Palette

There's a guy in Germany who has filled his forest with vintage autos, tractors and the like. He considers it an ever changing art installation as the natural world overtakes the creations of men. I'm not great at drawing vehicles. Even though I gridded off the photo and my paper, the unique curves of this poor car eluded me. Maybe it's not as off as I see it, and perhaps, the wobbly construction adds to the sagging feeling of these relics.

The spotlight under painting was similar to the previous one. Aside from some blue peeking through, I don't think it affected the color. My lack of confidence leads to opaque corrections and second thoughts. The result may give my paintings a certain style but I'd like to be better about laying down initial values of shadow and light.

Colors used: Permanent White, Lemon Yellow, Ultramarine Blue and Red Oxide. I did resort to some Leaf Green to bring out some brighter leaves. I also used some pastels, yellow and blue to add texture and adjust the background trees.

I only took one Work In Progress shot which shows that the light coming through the trees was originally cooler. I still can't achieve the kind of backlit, soft focus, tree effect that's in my head. I should try a piece which has the effect as the point of the painting.

Online, a former art teacher said my style is coming together. My style? I'm not sure what it is. As I said, I'm convinced that part of it is the way I overwork areas, searching for the right color. Because the colors often interact with lower layers of paint, it adds more color variation than I might put down intentionally.

Curiously, aside from James Gurney, most of the artists I put into my Pinterest "Plein Air Inspiration" folder are much more impressionistic oriented than my paintings. Maybe the piece above is a blending of that: An impressionistic frame around an object rendered in detail.

I don't know. The frustration level of this one was lower and the enjoyment of it's  creation was higher. If that trend continues, I'll be in great shape.           --Tad

Rhino!

This started with a photo in a National Geographic newsletter by Otto Plantema, Buiten Beeld, Minden Pictures. There were also two birds perched behind his second horn. One had a red beak that would've been a neat point of interest for the painting but their feathers almost blended into the Rhino's skin. I figured I had enough to deal with and so simplified.

I was too timid to draw on the sketchbook page, which I know is stupid because it's a sketchbook, so I drew on a separate piece of paper, rubbed some pastel on the back, then transferred it to the book. In my defense, It's a bound sketchbook by Pentalic filled with heavy watercolor paper. Still, I know it was silly.  Maybe next time.

This time, I did a little pre-painting prep. The day before, I sealed the paper with Acryla gouache which is gouache that uses an acryilic binder instead of gum arabic. A layer of regular gouache can be activated with water, allowing for blending after the fact. It can also muddy the color of the layers you paint on top of it if you're not careful. Acryla gouache dries like acrylic paint. Once it's dried, it's done. I bought a tube of white, blue, yellow and red to mix an approximation of anything I need out of those. I just added random color shapes to five pages with no idea of what I'll eventually paint on them. Ultimately, the color was covered by my opaque paint but I did start off with lighter washes so maybe there's a little glow left. But by coating the paper, it didn't suck up the paint as fast as the raw pages did. This made the actual painting process better.

Here's where I stopped the first day. Why did I stop? Maybe I thought it was going well and I didn't want to mess it up. Maybe I just lost energy. I will say that I had returned to it in the evening and the lights in my office weren't bright enough to light my paper. For my birthday, I'm getting an LED light with an adjustable temperature setting that will definitely allow for night painting. Of course, I hope to actually paint outside again. Then again, there are no rhinos in my backyard.

You can see the warm glow behind the horns which is the underpainting showing through. Maybe there's more warmth to the face because of it. After I get through the random pages, I'll try to use it more thoughtfully. The rhino was standing in grass in the original photo, more straw colored than what I suggested here. I knew I'd be blurring this or changing it completely so I moved on.

I blocked in the main colors but the body could've used more variation. In the previous painting, I got the bark texture by random strokes and dry brush. I was thinking I should do the same here. If I had a painted page of gray to experiment on, I might've. Instead, I started adding details to give me some anchor points. It's a lack of confidence move for me. "If I can make the nostril work, I'll just move across the whole painting." Not the best logic. After that, I called it a day.

I ended up going with a darker background. I added some tall grass in the foreground for depth but had to tone them way down as they were the brightest objects on the painting. I used pastel pencils to add some color variation to the rhino's body. There are a hundred things to be picky about but overall, I'm happy with this. It was an enjoyable process and if I can paint a few more like this, my confidence will be in great shape to tackle painting outdoors, possibly in front of people... if they ever let us out again.

On the other hand, I really like the ear closest to us. The light and shadow are working great to give an illusion of light. Plus the underpainting is showing through in interesting ways. It shows there are goals I want to reach that are attainable.                                 - Tad

The Leafcutter Ants

I fee I need to paint from reference in order to learn but I had this idea of my little onion guy being worried about leafcutter ants. So I tried to create my own reference photo with Photoshop. I couldn't find any pictures of ants crawling on a log that had them large enough to create the scene I had in mind.I took a mossy log and several separate close ups of leaf carrying ants and jigsawed them together with a rough painting of my vegetable man.

I was happy with the result. The log was great reference but the ants are all lit in a different way. Yet, the picture doesn't stand out as being wrong. However, as I started working, I was faced with the difference between photographing a scene and  painting it.

Specifically, depth of field. In this photo, there are transparent circles of light near the center of the shot. That's not something you see in real life. It's an artifact of the lenses in a camera. What would be the point of duplicating it in a painting? If I succeeded, I'd be imitating a color copying machine.

Lighting raised another question. In all my reference photos, the leafcutter ants are shot against black to contrast the brightness of the backlit leaves. Do I put a light source behind that center leaf? I opted to go darker with a blurry suggestion of leaves for contrast. The leaf at the center of the onion looks fantastic with lots of contrast. That kind of glow is what I was chasing.

To the right is my painting setup. I learned that my tripod is slightly short for me to paint standing. Out in the wild (my backyard) it hasn't been a problem. I have a portable camp stool and I'm always up for sitting down. Still, if I'm ever free to visit garage sales in the future, I'll keep an eye out for taller ones. Enlarge the photo and you'll see that a started using gouache like watercolor, thin and transparent. I worked around the leaves to preserve the white of the paper. You can also see that I used a grid to help me with my drawing. It matched the one in Photoshop.

I heard from several sources that every painting goes through an "ugly" stage and you have to just plow through it. In this painting, I felt there were times when parts of the painting worked better than they ended up in the final. I was pleased with the log because, instead of trying to analyze the bark, I worked messy yet ended up with something that looks very realistic when you take a step back. I put in the ants and leaves and knew I needed contrast to make them stand out. I played with the background lighting as I worked. Chasing the lens effect was fruitless.

Added the moss in a random pattern instead of driving myself crazy trying to copy the photo. Suggested trees in the background. Put the kid in cool shadow to contrast the leaves.I don't know how I could blur the onion boy as much as he was in the photo but I did soften his edges. I put some darks and highlights on the ants and put shadows under them and the leaves and decided to call it done.

One of my goals moving forward will be to do less experimenting on the page. It builds up layers of gouache can crack, especially in a sketchbook. I need to make decisions about lighting, values and contrast before I put the paint down.  Happy Easter/2020.  -- Tad

 

 

 

 

Values and Shapes

Another art thing I'm trying. I have three water brushes filled with diluted blue, black, and sepia inks. The idea is to be able to do quick value sketches. These are the first two pages of a 6x6inch sketchbook. Probably getting too wrapped up in trying to blend the colors instead of capturing values.

Paul Chadwick gave me the best advice when I told him I was trying to learn to paint, paraphrasing, "The biggest obstacle for animation or comic guys is stopping thinking in terms of lines." These exercises should help me with that (although the tree in the lower left is a fail in that aspect).

Meanwhile, "Stay at Home" orders limit me to photos and the backyard. I'm going to try piecing photos together in Photoshop for subject matter. It may be the return of Onion Boy.