Just a Tad

Painting from Life

Maybe it's from a career of sketching character designs, storyboard notes, and outlining story ideas on yellow legal pads, but I find it hard to draw on an easel when out looking for things to paint. Or maybe it's because I'm mostly stuck in my house and find my backyard boring, but I've done most of my paintings from photos. Even two of my "glow" paintings, the rose and the backlit trees, were practically outside my door, I took pictures of them and worked inside. But I know I must get out and paint things out in the world to improve. I'll get there, and here's a couple of baby steps.

First I want to say, I really like the above painting. The experience of working on two Hellboy animated film was a career highlight and I ended up with a lot of Hellboy toys. One of the best is this 18" tall, vinyl, Hellboy figure. And when I was wondering what I might paint, I looked up to see him, barely lit in the morning light coming around the Venetian blinds.

I think I did the pencil drawing in my lap or desk and definitely used a ruler for the straight lines. This one didn't go through an ugly stage where I get depressed but fight my way out. I didn't take a WIP shot, but it helped when I allowed myself to be messier at the start, especially with the blinds. I laid down a transparent wash of the tones which let me see the tones and values as I worked.

I rarely go back into a piece after it's "finished." Here's what it looked like when I first posted it. The scan is more accurate than the one above, showing Hellboy blending back into the shadows.

I was pretty happy with it. But the blinds were a bit sloppy and the light on the window sill needed to be brighter. There was also a jagged shadow cast by the blinds that I had pretty much ignored. So, having learned the lesson of "Waxing Too Soon" on the previous painting, and since I had a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish, I went back in.

The top is the final that was waxed for posterity. I got the shadow pattern but the sill color is probably too bright. But I had worked the surface too much and wisely quit while I was ahead. The blinds are better but don't quite capture the look of being lit from below. I think they need a more even dark shadow at the top and a sharper, straighter end shape on the right. Because the corner is rounded, it can look like the slats are thick and catching light from above. I should have looked its reversed image in a hand mirror for a fresh perspective. I have one for just that purpose. Still, I call it a win.

One more sketch to post and I'll be caught up. I actually went outside and painted something in the backyard, then detailed it in my "studio" just like a real pleine air artist! Nothing great but at least I got out! 

The next couple of days do not have time for painting. But I want to try a simple subject like the above, maybe rocks underwater. There might be a lot of rocks but it would be an personal "assignment" with a clear goal. But since I don't have a stream outside, it's probably bac to photographs!

                                              Stay Safe!  --Tad

Less Than the Sum of Its Parts

In the last post I said that if I was smart I'd space out the posting of my paintings backlog. I'm not that smart, just distracted. Anyway, the above are two parts of the same gouache painting I did in the last week of November. I kind of like each on their own. I wanted to try rocks again, ideally with some transparent water to show the rocks below. I grabbed a frame from a high-rez YouTube video and ended up cropping all but a little bit of water out of it.  I was working with a limited palette at first a couldn't get close to the colors of the reference, or even a satisfactory tone overall. Here's what I was working from:

Looking at it now, "How did I get so far off?" It's so much darker and monochromatic. To be fair, you're not seeing the painting when I was still trying to capture what was in the reference. I gave it a rest then looked at it from afar and thought, That's looking fairly good. I just have to take it a rock at a time." Not the best strategy for a strong painting, but I was more interested in problem solving and playing with the water. Dove back in and, to my eye, things got worse.

I have a fantastic book on landscapes by James Reynolds who was an western impressionist painter with realistic results. He wrote that he'd often move or add trees or other pieces of landscape to make a better painting. His pointed out that a painter is not a photographer. Your goal is to make a great painting not to perfectly capture what you're looking at.

Well, I was not on a path to greatness so I stopped trying to capture the background rocks and made them much darker. I went the opposite way with the right side of the painting and added bright autumn foliage. And then I fought with that dang water puddle. I could not get the transparent feel. Some of that was working so small, these paintings are only three and a half inches high. The other problem was that I kept reactivating the lower layers of paint. I need to try an all puddle painting, maybe even doing a master copy of an existing painting. It's just something I want to conquer. It's like working out a puzzle.

So here's what I ended up with:

Geez, looking at this side by side with the reference, "How did that left center rock get so small? Especially since it's the source of the painting's major problem?" Quick aside, I had purchased a jar of Dorland's Wax Medium to preserve the paintings from moisture. Not usually used in sketchbooks, but that's all I work in. Again, I am too precious with these sketchbooks. Anyway, after a couple of days of playing with this one, I decided to call it quits and coated it with the wax. Once you do that, you can no longer paint on it. Which means I could correct anything.

Usually, I don't try correcting anything because I'm tired of working on it. Mentally I just want to be through. The Hellboy painting in the next post is a case where I liked it so much, and was clear on what I wanted to correct, that I did go back in and am pleased with the result. But after I waxed this one, I saw it with fresh eyes and realized the weird pear-shaped rock in the center looked more like an actual pear than rock, didn't feel connected to the ground, and had awkward shared outlines with the smaller rock beside it. And the smaller rock also feels like it's unconnected to the ground because of a very few paint strokes. The mossy rock in the left foreground is mostly warm with some cool colors where it faces away from the light. But those cool colors look like they're the bottom edge of the small rock - just because a couple of grey strokes at the bottom. Lesson learned?

I highly recommend the James Reynolds book. The landscape book is hard to come by but Traildust is easily attainable. At the time of me writing this, it's still on Amazon. I used to show it to background painters to examine how he used shadow and light in paintings like "Monsoon." Alas, our schedules and budgets never allowed for the scene specific level of color design that would be required to capture it. Little did I know when I bought the book at a shop in Sedona, Arizona that James was probably painting just a few miles away.

Check his website here: http://jamesreynoldsartist.com/

 

                          Stay Safe --Tad

Capturing the Glow

I'm behind in posting the few paintings I've done. If I was smart, blog-wise, I'd post these over a couple of weeks. But I'm not seriously trying to build up numbers. This is sort of a creative diary for myself. Plus, seeing the creative struggles of someone who has successfully created art and entertainment, might help young people who are struggling themselves. I also make similar notes in my sketchbook.

So, instead of retyping my notes, I'll just show you what some pages look like.

Stay safe and healthy. And keep creating!        -- Tad