No, I'm not posting MY wedding photos. There aren't any. Instead, I'm giving you a link to the photographer for the wedding that I recently painted. Capture Me Candid is a professional wedding photographer in Charlotte, owned and operated by a wonderful lady named Lori. She did a fantastic job - her photos really captured the incredible spirit and energy of the evening. They even got a couple of shots of me, making a mess over in the corner! Go take a look at the photos, they're really marvelous: capturemecandidblog.com/2018/01/18/marissa-steven-charlotte-marriott-wedding/
Friday, January 19, 2018
Sunday, January 14, 2018
Color Testing and the New Painting
In my last post, I talked about a new painting on my easel. One of the things I want to work on is color mixing. The impetus came from researching Jeremy Lipking's process. I had noticed that his colors were beautifully muted without going into mud. That's not an easy thing to do. Several people who have taken workshops with him have made blog posts about his processes. As it turns out, his palette is pretty basic with almost no unusual colors. One notable difference is that he does not use earth colors (the umbers, siennas, and yellow ochre) because, he says, they go to mud very quickly. That being said, he apparently does use burnt Sienna on occasion, plus a couple of reds that could be considered earth tones, depending on how they're prepared by the paint maker.
So with this painting, I thought I'd use a very limited palette and use them to mix a range of grays and muted colors. Today, in the studio, I put that plan into action. I put some ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium red light, and Flemish white (a lead white) on the palette. Then I mixed up a range of cool and warm grays, then some cooler and warmer skin tones. Here's how the process looked:
There were more sheets, but you get the idea. I'm seeing a nice range of cool and warm grays, nice muted greens, and some good skin tones. Some of the mixtures gave a dark brown and I was even able to come up with one that was close to burnt Sienna. No blacks, though. Ultramarine blue and cad red will give a very dark muted purple, but as soon as you add a bit of yellow to the mixture, it gets lighter.
The next step was to apply some of these colors to the new painting. I started on the face, since that's the focus, and laid in what will probably be the first of several layers. Here's a detail of how it looks right now:
This is a fun challenge. I'm excited to see what happens with it next. I'll let you in on a secret: I have no idea how it'll turn out!
So with this painting, I thought I'd use a very limited palette and use them to mix a range of grays and muted colors. Today, in the studio, I put that plan into action. I put some ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium red light, and Flemish white (a lead white) on the palette. Then I mixed up a range of cool and warm grays, then some cooler and warmer skin tones. Here's how the process looked:
There were more sheets, but you get the idea. I'm seeing a nice range of cool and warm grays, nice muted greens, and some good skin tones. Some of the mixtures gave a dark brown and I was even able to come up with one that was close to burnt Sienna. No blacks, though. Ultramarine blue and cad red will give a very dark muted purple, but as soon as you add a bit of yellow to the mixture, it gets lighter.
The next step was to apply some of these colors to the new painting. I started on the face, since that's the focus, and laid in what will probably be the first of several layers. Here's a detail of how it looks right now:
This is a fun challenge. I'm excited to see what happens with it next. I'll let you in on a secret: I have no idea how it'll turn out!
Sunday, January 07, 2018
Starting a New Painting
I haven't done much of anything in the studio for the past three weeks or so. When our dog came down with vestibular disease, that took all my attention through the holidays. I mean, I have my priorities, and my dogs are a very important part of my family, and I needed to take care of the little girl. Over the past week or so, I've been able to get into the studio three times, so things are starting to move again.
Being out of the studio for a while may have a benefit that I didn't expect. For the past couple of years, I've been working on figures and experimenting with ways of capturing an individual's character on paper or canvas. This has included mark-making that is more energetic, exploring how much to "finish" a work vice leaving parts of it "unfinished", and trying to be a bit less literal about what goes into an artwork. In the back of my mind, there has been this idea that the next level is to put those figures into environments and situations where there's more of a story or metaphor. Now, after being away for a while, it seems to be time to go to that next level.
I've had an idea that I wanted to take one of my charcoal and pastel works and blow it up in oil on a much larger canvas. The specific piece is this one:
There are many things I like about this work: the strong focus on the face, the unselfconscious and slightly awkward pose, the overall composition of light and dark, the unfinished nature of most of the work, the mystery that comes from the eyes being in heavy shadow, and the confrontational and challenging nature of Astrid's gaze directly at the viewer.
One reason that I hadn't translated this into an oil on canvas earlier is that I wasn't sure how to capture the looseness of the charcoal and pastel. Oil painting is a different beast entirely and I have not been able to get the same effect in oil that I can get in charcoal. But now I think I have an idea about how to move forward with this image. No, I'm not going to try to duplicate it. Instead, I'm going to use it as an inspiration for a very different work.
So that's what I started yesterday. The first thing I did was to lay a piece of tracing paper over the original and grid it up. A grid is an old and low-tech way of enlarging or shrinking a composition. You build a grid over the original, build a new grid on the canvas where you want the image, and draw the outline on the corresponding grid marks. Here's the original with the tracing paper and grid over it:
Some artists use a projector to enlarge an image onto a canvas. I don't. One of the reasons is that I like the grid system. It's low-tech and ensures that there are human errors incorporated into the image. That's an advantage to me because human errors are the big difference between art and photography. The original of Astrid #7 was done freehand and you can see some of the "errors" if you look closely. The chair, for example, is a little lopsided, which is fine by me.
The next step is to draw a corresponding grid on the canvas and then transfer the composition onto it. Here's how the canvas looks:
Okay, sorry, it's a bit hard to see, but you can barely make out the gridlines and some of the drawing. I use vine charcoal because it erases easily. And yes, the canvas really does have a slightly greenish sloppy tint to it. I had started a painting on it four years ago, but it failed, so I painted oil primer over it and then toned it again. The canvas has been waiting for something new ever since.
And here's my painting setup. The original is 25"x19" and the new canvas is 50"x40".
This afternoon, I started on the canvas. I wiped out all the gridlines then laid in a cool dark as basically one large shape. I'm trying to use a limited palette as much as possible, so I've got ultramarine blue, cad red, cad yellow medium, and Flemish white on my palette. I'll let this dry a day or three before starting to develop the figure. So here's how it stands right now:
Being out of the studio for a while may have a benefit that I didn't expect. For the past couple of years, I've been working on figures and experimenting with ways of capturing an individual's character on paper or canvas. This has included mark-making that is more energetic, exploring how much to "finish" a work vice leaving parts of it "unfinished", and trying to be a bit less literal about what goes into an artwork. In the back of my mind, there has been this idea that the next level is to put those figures into environments and situations where there's more of a story or metaphor. Now, after being away for a while, it seems to be time to go to that next level.
I've had an idea that I wanted to take one of my charcoal and pastel works and blow it up in oil on a much larger canvas. The specific piece is this one:
Astrid #7
There are many things I like about this work: the strong focus on the face, the unselfconscious and slightly awkward pose, the overall composition of light and dark, the unfinished nature of most of the work, the mystery that comes from the eyes being in heavy shadow, and the confrontational and challenging nature of Astrid's gaze directly at the viewer.
One reason that I hadn't translated this into an oil on canvas earlier is that I wasn't sure how to capture the looseness of the charcoal and pastel. Oil painting is a different beast entirely and I have not been able to get the same effect in oil that I can get in charcoal. But now I think I have an idea about how to move forward with this image. No, I'm not going to try to duplicate it. Instead, I'm going to use it as an inspiration for a very different work.
So that's what I started yesterday. The first thing I did was to lay a piece of tracing paper over the original and grid it up. A grid is an old and low-tech way of enlarging or shrinking a composition. You build a grid over the original, build a new grid on the canvas where you want the image, and draw the outline on the corresponding grid marks. Here's the original with the tracing paper and grid over it:
Some artists use a projector to enlarge an image onto a canvas. I don't. One of the reasons is that I like the grid system. It's low-tech and ensures that there are human errors incorporated into the image. That's an advantage to me because human errors are the big difference between art and photography. The original of Astrid #7 was done freehand and you can see some of the "errors" if you look closely. The chair, for example, is a little lopsided, which is fine by me.
The next step is to draw a corresponding grid on the canvas and then transfer the composition onto it. Here's how the canvas looks:
Okay, sorry, it's a bit hard to see, but you can barely make out the gridlines and some of the drawing. I use vine charcoal because it erases easily. And yes, the canvas really does have a slightly greenish sloppy tint to it. I had started a painting on it four years ago, but it failed, so I painted oil primer over it and then toned it again. The canvas has been waiting for something new ever since.
And here's my painting setup. The original is 25"x19" and the new canvas is 50"x40".
This afternoon, I started on the canvas. I wiped out all the gridlines then laid in a cool dark as basically one large shape. I'm trying to use a limited palette as much as possible, so I've got ultramarine blue, cad red, cad yellow medium, and Flemish white on my palette. I'll let this dry a day or three before starting to develop the figure. So here's how it stands right now:
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