Just a Tad

Mountain Stream

This came out much better than I thought it did at first. I was trying to capture the patterns of light and shadow from the reference photo. I finally gave up because, at a certain point, if you keep reworking gouache, the water lifts the layer below and colors can easily get muddy. But then I posted it and people really reacted positively. Some I can take full responsibility for, but some comments were based on "happy accidents" that I didn't realize were happening at the time. But I definitely started with a plan this time.

I should get out to capture scenes En Plein Air, outdoors looking at real life instead of photographs. I've read many painters say that it is the best way to improve. But, there's a pandemic going on I'm trying to limit all travel. Sure, there's not much danger catching a whiff of Covid 19 in the middle of the woods unless Bigfoot sneezes in your direction but it's summer and most of California is enduring a heat wave along with the largest fires in recorded history (That's up north. We'll get our chance to burn when the Santa Ana winds kick up in the Fall).  I'm not even going to set up in the backyard when it's over 102˚!

I got the idea to watch some 4K YouTube videos of people taking hikes in a variety of locales. It wasn't perfect because I couldn't pick the composition. Maybe I'll look for virtual reality posts so I can adjust the view a bit. Actually, this image might be from a relaxation video featuring mountain streams. No matter, I liked the relatively simple shapes and strong light direction.

 

That's an improvement over my early tries. I'm not just looking around and thinking, "I guess I can paint that." I was more thoughtful. This photo has nice perspective cues in its shapes, values and color. The rocks overlap on both edges. Even the water has shapes that show depth, like the big hump of water between the front rocks, which then dips and surges up in another ridge and splash. The colors are warm in the front and cool in the back. I also liked the bands of shadow and light across the water. These things gave me goals within the painting.

When I started my gouache adventure almost a year ago, the idea of tackling a mountain stream wouldn't have occurred to me. But I did a nice job of capturing translucent water in a Koi painting from my Lena Rivo class. But what brought it into the realm of possibility was a black and white study of an Edgar Payne wave painting (two posts back). It seemed like I could do this one with a limited palette. I believe it was Yellow Ochre, Pthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Venetian Red, Titanium White and either Lemon Yellow or Cadmium Yellow.

It may be silly to to a preliminary sketch for a sketchbook but I did. I held a scrap piece of paper and played with the colors. I was almost too pleased with it. I feared the "final" would suffer in comparison.

 For me, painting is often a psychological battle. If I worry about my performance, I freeze up. The causal act of just painting on a scrap of paper in my hand removed pressure. In turn, having it come out well got me part way up the mental mountain of the sketchbook painting.

I tried to capture the colors and shapes of the photo but gave myself permission to worry only about the painting and not the likeness. I wasn't trying to be a camera but I still dug into the photo for specifics.

The Happy Accidents

I was complimented on the translucence of the water. There's probably more in the water of the painting than there is in the photo. A large part of that was intentional. I wanted the viewer to see below the surface at the base of the various rocks. But there's some awesome distortion of the left, bottom edge of that front, right rock that just... happened. I don't think I was conscious of it as I laid down the strokes. But there's patches of color in the front pool and the light water at the base of the back rocks that suggest you're glimpsing rocks on the stream bed. It still counts whether I was trying for that or not, right?

The final "accident" that I was definitely aware of but decided not to change is, again, on that front rock on the right. You'll see that it's covered with moss in the photo. In my painting, it looks like a reflection from the pool of water. I'm not sure it makes sense with the light direction but I'll happily take it.

Next up: I paint the last page by returning to the beginning!              --Tad

 

More Catching Up

 I thought I was just a single post behind. Whoops. I'll start with something in color (barely), cover more black and white classwork, some color classwork, and two sketchbook pages. One I gave up on and the second that people declared a "Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah" piece.

The seagull is from a photo from a very foggy pier up the coast. I tried adding interest with subtle clouds but I wasn't deliberate enough. Clouds should be taken as seriously as any other object in a painting. Here, the vertical brush strokes up and down the right side look like anything but clouds.

I should have started with a soft wash, light at the top to suggest sun starting to burn off the fog. That would match the feeling of sunlight on the gull's head. his underside seems muddy. It warmer but a subtler tone would be better. Maybe a touch of warm violet.

 

Back to full black and white for my class in landscape plein air sketching. I'm "lucky" to have rustic roads and hills within a five minute drive from my house. The "lucky" is in quotes because, come October the Santa Ana winds will begin to blow. High winds off the desert, sucking the last bit of moisture from the foliage, and capable of carrying burning embers a quarter mile or more ahead of a flame. Fire season, when we just hope the electric lines are in good shape and nobody is being stupid welding or BBQing upwind. Anyway, once again I headed out and took pictures that I thought would be good compositions for painting.

I should be painting them onsite. That's the whole point of plein air. You see colors in the shadows that the camera won't pick up and it forces you to draw. It also pushes you to finish in a short amount of time because the light is changing and the paints are drying. Maybe I'll try again when the weather is cooler and the pandemic isn't surging.

I think these are fairly successful. I didn't worry about capturing the specific angle of each distant slope. Working in monochrome definitely frees you up. Reducing the choices you have to make down to value and composition improves you chances of conquering each. The last two are just down the block from me. They're the less manicured surroundings of the city golf course.

 

 

Color for class! The next session introduced a limited palette of color, Yellow Ochre, Venetian Red, Sap Green, Ultramarine Blue along with black and white. Three of the painting were of photos included in class materials. The other three were to be done from life. I managed one of the hill looming over my backyard. It only "looms" when fire season is approaching.

I had already played with limited palettes. It's amazing what you can mix and what the eye perceives. Where you place a color matters nearly as much of what colors you mix. My daughter-in-law gave be a deep purple dress shirt for my birthday, perfect for hawking Darkwing Duck art at comic conventions. I had a bright purple/violet tie that I held up to it, in case I wanted to class up by con table. Suddenly, the shirt looked darker, almost a deep charcoal color. The warm incandescent light of a table lamp affected it's look but the bright hue of the tie changed it completely. So what might the Grand Canyon or Glendale foothills look like with such a palette?

I can't believe I tipped those water tanks, matching the angle of the slope. The aren't like that. They are level. And if I had painted them level the composition would be much stronger because of the contrast with all the sloping lines.

 

I do not like this truck painting. I thought the rusty heap parked outside a local restaurant would be perfect. But it turned out to be a "new" truck, maybe from a it. Brown paint was slopped on to make it look rusty. Not in a Hollywood, set designer way,  just random brush strokes. I started with a yellow underpainting. I probably should have used a violet or purple. The complimentary color would've added interest and also pulled down the brightness. 

  It's not ugly, in fact, it's fine. It just wore me down. I wasn't havin g fun and I didn't have a clear path toward saving it in my eyes. So I stopped.

The final sketchbook piece for this post is based on a photo by Dave Master. The photo itself looked like a painting. I experimented with Pthalo Blue for the sky which is a very potent color. That, along with the road and the bright colors of the foliage made my Disney friends think of the song sequence from Song of the South. I just needed to add a blue bird to the silhouette's shoulder.

The weeds growing into the road on the right seem to float a bit to me. I think the bright yellow on those plants pop too much with the purple hues of the road.

 

Next post: The consensus seems to think it's the best thing I've done so far!       -- Tad

Classwork Homework

As I mentioned in the previous post, I bought a year of Schoolism which lets me watch as many of their video classes as I want. I'm starting out with Landscapes in Gouache and Watercolor by Nathan Fowkes. It's the course the led to his book. It's nice to have the book which is packed with many more examples of his own work than the class contains.

My intention is to actually work through the course, doing all the assignments, although I may tweak them a bit to make it more enjoyable. Although I don't want to change them so much as to miss the point. The first homework assignment was to do master studies in black and white, paying attention to simple shapes and values.

I found these to be confidence builders. Removing worries about color and composition lead to and end result that was more ambitious than anything I would try on my own. And I was doing more than one a day. That helped me overcome the fear of starting that I had been carrying with me for so long.

I sort of wish I had done these things years ago, but that's like wishing you learned to play the piano when you were a kid. You don't want to put in the work now, you want that kid to have done all the work. The truth is, there's no reason why you can't start now. You won't instantly have the abilities you want but the journey to get them will be enjoyable too. So leave that little kid you alone and have some fun.      --Tad

Catching Up

Whoah! I knew I was behind in tracking my progress with gouache painting here, but I thought I was just one or two behind. Maybe I don't have the drive to document if I think things are going well. Not that it hasn't been a roller coaster. In my opinion, the above is one of the best paintings I've done. I went out on a late afternoon scouting trip to find painting subjects. My idea was to take a picture then return home to draw the scene. If you haven't picked it up from reading this blog, I'm rarely confident in my drawing ability. I restarted this blog last Fall with the goal of drawing at least one thing from life everyday. I have not done that. Anyway, putting a photo on my computer screen at the same size I intend to paint allows me to measure or draw on a grid. So that was the plan: find a place, draw at home, return to the spot at the same time and paint plein air.

Except, there was a drastic weather change, going from sunny skies to completely overcast with occasional rain drizzles. No chance of getting those same shadows. It was forecast to continue for three days, so I ended up painting from a photo. This was a breakthrough for me. I was conscious of dividing the picture into planes with the distant hills across the valley, that terracotta slope to the left, the bushes, and the tree. I also didn't worry about painting everything that was there or capturing the exact shapes of the foliage. The "fun" was getting the light coming through the leaves, both from the blue sky and the cast light from the right. Overall, there was more intention in this as I worked on it.  I'm pleased with it. But this wasn't the first painting since I wrote here last.

This was the first painting I did and I was in the opposite emotional state from that first one. What put me in the mental dumps, aside from the world going to hell, was that I had bought a year's subscription to Schoolism. It was a hundred dollars off sale and I had enough money from convention sales to more than cover it. What got me to pull the trigger was a new course by Nathan Fowkes. It was a daily Color and Light workout - paintings meant to be done in an hour. I thought it would be a great place to start and I could do it in the morning and have plenty of time for other stuff, artistic or otherwise.

But I was lost in the first lesson. I started doing what I had done in my Lena Rivo gouache course, trying to imitate Nathan exactly. Although he included most of the information to design a brush like he was using, there were elements missing and I had never designed a brush before. Plus, he's moving at real time so my anal need to analyze his strokes and then duplicate them meant constantly stopping and starting the video. I felt overwhelmed much like when I visit a con and see tables of animation student's work. I feel I'd never be accepted by a studio if I was trying it today. I take joy in their work and feel tremendously lucky to have graduated in the mid-seventies. What the hell was I doing?

I woke up depressed and needed an artistic "win." So I set up in the backyard, picked an angle that had some of the traits a painting should have and started painting. No drawing ahead of time, no coating the page, just slapping down paint. Every painting goes through an ugly stage. This painting seemed stuck there. But I kept going. I didn't worry about capturing the reality when it interfered with the painting. I started adding detail of the light hitting the tree. I readjusted values. At the end, it was not perfect but it was a painting. Nothing exciting about it. Some posters described it as very peaceful. I'm glad they got an emotion out of it. It really lifted my spirits.

I showed my wife. She appreciated it and I explained how frustrated I had been feeling about my new courses. She was puzzled, "Isn't this supposed to be 'fun?'"

I blinked and returned to the Schoolism page. I also visited their Facebook page where students post their work and saw that my first workout attempt wasn't so bad. I decided to switch courses to "Landscape Sketching in Watercolor and Gouache" which is the course his new book is based on. Most importantly, I took myself off the clock. I didn't have to stick to a weekly schedule as if I was turning in assignments. That's what you do when you pay for the whole teacher/student relationship. I spent 40 years in animation. I'm not trying to get hired anywhere. I still intend to do all the assignments. You'll see them in my next post.  But this "having fun" thing was worth exploring. Which brings me to my next paintings.

 

So after having the good experience from scouting up Tapo Canyon, I went on another scouting trip. This time, I wasn't intending to return and paint there. A late afternoon painting excursion would end up right in the middle of dinner prep. Anyway, I shot some trees near a wash, a hillside, the pattern of shadows in a park and an alley. All of these were basically at the same location. Each of them, would give me foliage practice and shadow patterns.

When I looked at them the next day, it was the alley that seemed to offer the best composition. But then I slumped in my chair and sighed, "Why do I want to paint an alley?" I knew it would be good practice. I knew every painting taught me stuff. But why am I learning to paint? I know why I write. It's to tell stories. But why am I learning to paint?

I don't know when the idea hit me. Why not juxtapose the ordinary with the extraordinary? When we watch kaiju movies, we're invariably near the monsters -- well, except when it's an old movie showcasing a guy in a rubber suit crashing through miniatures.  The proximity increases the tension. But what if Godzilla was just passing through, being careful not to step on cars, or people. What if it was a sunny day without the smoke caused by ineffectual bombs or crashing planes?

I found a good picture of a Godzilla toy shot from the right angle, or at least close to the angle I wanted. I mocked it up in photoshop, seemed good, I was off. The main thing was to get the atmospheric perspective that would put Godzilla far enough away. I didn't quite get it in gouache, so I used smudged pastel to add a little more atmosphere between the monster and me. And, just like that, I was telling a story.

I was looking at some brilliant work by James Reynolds, a painter most famous for his western subject matter. Again, can't remember when the lightning of inspiration hit but I wondered what it would look like if a cowboy was herding giant bees instead of cattle. Once again, I mocked up the idea on my computer and it looked good. And funny. But when I drew it into my 5" x 8" sketchbook, it was immediately apparent that I would have to paint larger or use teeny, tiny brushes, which I knew would not go well.

So I sketched it out on some 9" x 12' watercolor paper and then I was hit by a rare bolt of wisdom. I thought that it might be wise to try painting one bee in a field before an entire herd. Very glad I did. The bee was a little trickier than I expected but what I really needed more experience with was the field. I needed to place the bees in tall grass. Also, there was a quality of summer heat and bright light that I wanted to capture and I'm not quite there yet. But I am not unhappy with my sketchbook bee. It may not be a story in itself, but it raises questions. That's good too.                                        -- 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

 

 

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