Just a Tad

Four in a Day

I beat myself up about not drawing enough. I've spent the bulk of my career drawing from my imagination and not drawing from life. But for this project, I traced a photograph and don't even feel guilty about it. I find this lamp hard to draw. I've tried it a couple of times in the past, but it just ended up wonky looking. But I loved how the light affected the colors of the stucco and how the flowers crowded around it.

At the same time, I knew I needed to start painting from life. In an alternate universe, I'm supposed to be on a tour of the UK. The plan was to take painting breaks to add to a travel sketchbook. But I don't feel I would've been ready because the last time I painted from life was October 13, 2019. It was a planted pot in the backyard.

So in the spirit of "STAY SAFE, STAY AT HOME" during our battle with the virus, I now return to the backyard, that infernal lamp, and a desire to capture the changes of light and color. So first up, sealing the paper with a wash of Acrylagouache.

My goal was to capture the same view at different times of day, morning, midday, sunset/dusk/twilight, and night. So I gave each a different color of wash. I chose pink for morning, yellow for midday, violet for dusk, and blue for night. My internal debate was whether or not to leave the paper clean on the top surfaces of the wall, especially the midday, like you would with watercolor. Ultimately I decided to keep the wash very light on those areas.

My Acrylagouache "red" is actually Vermillion and ended up much warmer than I expected. Because of that, the violet I mixed turned muddy. I washed out my brush and tried again, this time reinforcing the coolness with a blue wash. This resulted in the sketch looking much more interesting than the actual subject in that the sun sets behind a hill, dropping everything into shadow. My hope was to push the final painting in the direction of the wash colors.

This is how I went into the second day. Although I was tempted to start the morning sketch, working from my reference photo, I accepted the challenge of working plein air and taking no more than an hour. Considering this paintings are only about 3.5 inches across, I didn't think it would be a problem.

I started "Morning" with the familiar feeling of being lost. I squinted at the scene, dismayed by the mass of leaves I was looking at. Spent a lot of time trying to get the local color of the masonry then started laying in darks and lights. Pushed through as I usually do by picking a specific detail and trying to nail it down. I put in cool shadows that weren't really there. At the end, the light had changed so much that I realized that I had missed getting the tree shadows on the front of the column - which was the thing that gave me the idea to capture the post at different times of days. Finished up, a little depressed.

Around noon I went out to paint "Midday." This went better. It was because I had already tackled the scene and thought I could learn from mistakes. I seemed to have changed the shape of the lamp. It feels more Japanese here. But I was happy that I captured the brightness of the light. Felt much better but not super confident about "Sunset."

I wanted to paint some sunset colors but we have a big hill behind our house. By the time the sun is going down, our entire yard is in shadow already. I had the notion that I could take the shadow patterns from earlier in the day but change the light to make it feel like dusk. But I didn't have the color knowledge to make that work on the fly. I ended up with a bland, bluish painting with very little contrast. Wish I had taken a picture.

Night. I had snapped a photo the night before which emphasized that this painting would be about contrast. The plants around the lamp lit brightly against a near black background. I knew I didn't actually want to use black so I mixed ultramarine blue with Winsor Violet and a touch of Perylene Violet. Ultimately, I added some Ivory Black to that mix to get the deep darks. Much like the Midday painting, my favorite area is the top of the stucco column. Again, I felt I was much closer to capturing the feeling of bright light.

So two hits and two misses. I purposely did not look at the paintings again until the next morning. I had reference photos and felt I could, at the very least, get the shadows back into the morning version. It worked! I used contrast and reinforced the light direction. Now I felt I had three winners. What to do about "Sunset?"

About two decades ago, I bought a book of western paintings at "The Bookworm" in downtown Sedona, Arizona. The paintings were/are stunning. He depicted different times of day, seasons, time periods in unique ways, at least to my eyes. I shared this book with the color stylists and background painters on several of my post Disney shows. Anyway, I realized I could probably find inspiration in his work, and I did.

It was enough to approximate what I had in mine. As far as I'm concerned, I managed to pull all four into the success column for what I was trying to do.   --Tad

 

 

 

Leetle Beetle

This was a lesson in not chasing the exact color, especially the color on a computer monitor. The flower my original photo was a hot pink with some very warm shadows. Looking at a computer monitor is like looking at a stained glass window. The light is coming from the image which makes it literally glow. So here's the original photograph.

What makes a good photo is often different that what makes a good painting. For me, it's the striking differences in color in the photo. Not just between the insect and the blossom, but the color variation in the petals themselves. The gravy on top is the style of the beetle, like a futuristic anime robot. Of course, lots of japanese animated robot design is inspired by insects so I guess it's a closed circle.

Going in, I knew it would be a challenge to capture that color. I had the same difficulty with a still life in my Lena Rivo class. I'm not sure why my beetle came out cool instead of warm. If it was warmer there'd be more contrast with the cool flower. Damn, missed opportunity.

I started with a light pencil drawing. Frustrated with my sketch, I ultimately corrected it with a rubbed transfer from a photo print out. I was passed my sketchbook pages with a thick underpainting. So I gave the page a light, warm wash of acrylagouache to seal it. In hindsight, which is 90% of what this blog is about, I should have put a warm yellow spotlight on the beetle.

I started by laying in washes of color. Looking at this stage now, I see a delicate petal, center top, which comes closest to capturing the look of the flower. Obviously a complete accident as you can see by the surrounding chaos. I tried to be conscious of values. I used photoshop to make the picture black and white to better understand them. There are basically two clumps of darks, in the center of the flower and under the insect. I think it would be a better painting if somehow the darks and lights led the eye to the beetle, in theory at least.

Overall, I'm pleased with this, and yet, I see ways it could be improved. But I don't want to obsess over a single painting and the gouache would dissolve into a muddy mess if I kept trying to correct things.

I really need to do some fast, small paintings. Not that these are huge, but quick, square studies that make me capture values and colors outside. I'm learning with every painting so if I do more painting, I will learn more. Finally, for kicks, I warmed up the beetle in Photoshop.

 

 

The Vikings of Zorn!

Another page from my Pentalic sketchbook. It's all gouache except for a water soluble pencil sword blade. I took a couple of photos from a nearby Scandinavian Festival and pieced them together in Photoshop. The lighting was the same in both but no one photo captured the drama.

So once again, instead of painting outside on a beautiful day, I'm inside staring at a Wacom monitor. You can see my nifty LED lamp perched atop my easel in the photo. The light temperature can be adjusted and it lets me work on a painting at any time. You can also glimpse the ridiculous underpainting that I was dealing with.

I get it now. Even if I'm doing a random underpainting to seal the paper, it should be a light wash that suggests a lighting pattern of some sort. This was a thick rainbow, sort of suggested a sunset over the ocean. What a knucklehead.

Since I was painting from a manipulated image to begin with, I tried covering the background with a dark purple in Photoshop along with a hint of digital flames that would sort of match the lighting on the men. Then I made their highlights warmer and shadows cooler to match the idea of an unseen burning village behind them. Luckily, I came to my senses.

If I'm to learn to paint natural light, I need to paint from reality. Or at least a photo of reality,so I went back to the original photos. I used leftover paint, still on the palette from my Forest Car piece, to fill in the background behind the vikings. I left their silhouettes, just in case the underpainting would work some magic for me.

The idea of painting a couple of human figures on my froze me for a bit. Where to start? I remembered the lessons of my class which said to pick a shape with a medium value to start with. Move onto an adjacent color, asking the questions,"What is the new color's hue? Is its value darker or lighter than the first color? Is it warmer or cooler?"

Even so, looking at all the colors in a scene and all the colors in my paintbox, there were lot's of choices. I thought I should go for a limited palette as I had done before. Then it hit me. I should try the Zorn palette.

Google for details but it comes down to four colors: Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Light, Ivory Black. Adding white to black creates a cool grey. Adding the warm Yellow Ochre to the cool color shifts it a little green. It turned out to be pretty amazing and I hardly used any paint. Even when I came back to the painting the following day, I just misted the palette and used what was there, even the white.

I think my visual analysis improved as I concentrated on the details of the faces. I could see the gradations of light and skin tones and how they defined the planes of the face. Ultimately I was frustrated by the size of my painting.

My critical review: Although the overall effect is nice my biggest area for improvement are the shadows. I'm often too timid with shadows. I forced myself to go darker, which mostly worked on the center guy, but I didn't darken the curve of his stomach and the left side of his chest.

The shadows of the spear carrier's arm are too dark and take focus away from the central figure. The value of his tunic also competes with the center figure. These are things I could go in to correct but there comes a point where, for the sake of my sanity, I have to call it quits and move on.

In the category of "Leave Well Enough Alone," is the possible use of drybrush to suggest chain mail.

But overall, I'm okay with this.                                                --Tad