Carl texting. (Looks more like some heavy biker dude than my little boy!) 8x10 Oil on board
Chelsea (Unfinished - for now) 9x12 Oil on board
Red Couch 8x10 Oil on board
Candles and Oranges still life 6x8 Oil on board
Tea and Orange still life 6x8 Oil on board
Tea Time's Over still life 6x8 Oil on board
Look Ma, no hands!
As a kid one of the first things you want to do after being taught how to ride a bike is to let go of the handlebars. While suturing his top lip and the cut above his eye, the emergency room doctors asks the little boy what happened. "I fell off my bike" he said. "How did it happen?" The doctor asked. "I wanted to show my mom how good I could ride. I was coming down the hill real fast. She was in the garden so shouted, 'Look Ma, no hands!'"
After some good art instruction, it's time to let go of the handlebars. (Let's hope things turn out a little better for me!) Painting the Essence with ACAD art teacher Maya Gohill certainly was good instruction. I learnt several new things, while others were reinforced. Here they are:
1. Simplify - crop, cut, edit, compose, think. This was the core of the class. Painting The Essence. Don't get bogged down in the details. I must train my brain to look for what is necessary so that a painting reveals the reason for its existence.
2. Start with the shadows - This I learnt from Dan Schultz, although he would say, "Start with your darkest dark or deepest value." I am still struggling with this one. I tend to paint in a light key, avoiding high value contrasts. I also tend to start with the mid tones and work in both directions - light and dark as I go along. My commitment though, is to learn, so I'm trying to do things the way those with many more miles on their brushes say to do.
3. Get it down and leave it - Do not overwork your painting. This is the reason I took the class. A painting is not like a race with a start and finish line. A painting is never finished - you must just know when to stop. This is one of the most important things to learn. Two things can help until you instinctively know when it's "quittin' taam" as they say down in Alabama.
A. Put a time limit on a painting session. Nothing does this better than the changing light of plein air painting. A more mechanical approach is to use a stopwatch or timer. This forces you to get it down, follow the 5 steps: sketch out the composition, paint in background and shadows, paint shadow shapes and cast shadows, get the mid and light colors down and put on highlights and finish up.
B. Paint a LOT! I have begun to keep a list of ideas. Before one painting is finished I have the next one lined up so I don't sit around wondering what to paint. What can help here are the many daily painting challenges out there. I have just joined Carol Marine's Daily Paintworks and will try my hand at her weekly challenge. Liz Wiltzen challenged herself to paint 100 paintings in 100 days last year (See 100 in 100 on her blog). It was tough, but along with everyone else who has done something similar she says it is the best way to fast track your skills.
A. Put a time limit on a painting session. Nothing does this better than the changing light of plein air painting. A more mechanical approach is to use a stopwatch or timer. This forces you to get it down, follow the 5 steps: sketch out the composition, paint in background and shadows, paint shadow shapes and cast shadows, get the mid and light colors down and put on highlights and finish up.
B. Paint a LOT! I have begun to keep a list of ideas. Before one painting is finished I have the next one lined up so I don't sit around wondering what to paint. What can help here are the many daily painting challenges out there. I have just joined Carol Marine's Daily Paintworks and will try my hand at her weekly challenge. Liz Wiltzen challenged herself to paint 100 paintings in 100 days last year (See 100 in 100 on her blog). It was tough, but along with everyone else who has done something similar she says it is the best way to fast track your skills.
4. Look for and paint shapes - I've heard this so many times before, "Squint down and look for the shapes" but it was only when Maya asked whether I see shapes or lines when I look at a scene or a person did it suddenly make sense. Because I draw, I have trained my brain to see lines. I just do not look for shapes. Shapes seem so random to me; blobs floating around without real definition or connection to anything. You can't measure a shape - or so I thought. So, committed to learning, I tried and would you believe it, I discovered a new way of seeing!
Just maybe some great paintings will emerge as I train my brain to see shapes without loosing the ability to see lines and put into practice all the things I've learned.
Just maybe some great paintings will emerge as I train my brain to see shapes without loosing the ability to see lines and put into practice all the things I've learned.
