Practice

On Tuesday night, I practiced some thumbnails using pictures from Ely. This feels awkward, but I know I need to practice this skill. It should help with seeing value shapes better. For the sunset reflected in the water, I like the second attempt (the one on the right better).

I also tried a quick one of a scene outside a window. It's hard figuring out how to do this!

Last, but not least, I practiced paint strokes for painting evergreens. There were beautiful evergreens up in Ely and I'm not sure how to paint them. Rather than committing to a painting, I thought I'd just play around and see what happened. 

Different Paint Brushes

I decided not to work on a specific painting today, but rather to play with some different brushes. Getting over GPS (goopy paint syndrome) opens new possibilities.  I did 4 quick, not very accurate, drawings of a portion of a monarch butterfly wings and tried painting them with 4 different brushes.

The obvious conclusion is that the filbert brush was a terrible choice. No surprise there. Mostly as I kept working with the different brushes, I found myself really thinking about how to use a brush more effectively for a sharp line or edge versus fill in color more broadly.

Just as the first time I dabbled with using different paint colors helped me learn how to better mix color with my regular palette, I hope this will give me some ideas and things to think about and work on with my paint strokes.

Timed = Less Angst?

Who knew that timing oneself when painting could led to less stress and less angst rather than adding to it? In Kat’s online class for lesson 3, she asked participants to keep track of the time they are spending. I decided to do this, plus also time myself more actively. The self-designed rules are that I get unlimited drawing time and before I start painting I decide on a set amount of time. Whatever amount of time it is, I divide it into 3 chunks. For each chunk of time, I set a timer which goes off. I have been using a visual timer (as an app, not a clock) rather than a countdown timer. When the timer goes off, I stop, walk away for a moment, regroup, and set the timer again. After the last timed segment, I take another short break and give myself a few more minutes to add a few finishing touches. After the timed painting of Dorian, I have finished these two paintings in this way.

There have been a lot of positives and I think I need to add this to my mental tool kit. Most important is that it keeps me working at a reasonable clip without feeling rushed and without overthinking things. Plus, it forces me to step away, which I know I should do but don't. It's also prevented me from falling down the rabbit hole of "something is not working and I must dwell, focus, and fixate on it until I can make it better", which by the way never works. While I am not necessarily reaching that magical feeling of flow, it does help me turn down my analytical mind and turn up my doing mind. I've been walking away from painting feeling refreshed and happy, even if I look back at my painting and see things I wish I would have done differently or better.

Here is my first attempt at painting a beautiful handmade mug that a friend gave to me last year. Total painting time was 15 minutes. I don't like the shadow or the colors that I used in the shadow, but I think I am happier with the overall painting than I would have been if I used unlimited time to paint it. I really think painting this way might help me develop some better habits.

#324 - Favorite Mug - 6" x 6" - paper

Last night, I painted from one of my many, many butterfly pictures in my backyard. I grew a section  of zinnias along the alley just for the butterflies and was richly rewarded. Also, there is something very special about painting a plant which I grew from seed.

#325 - Backyard Butterfly - 6" x 6" - paper

This one was painted in 30 minutes. The stamen of the flowers became a gloppy mess, although the flower "reads" better in the picture than in the actual painting. It also seemed like I got closer to painting how I felt about the background, rather than trying to paint each individual green thing in the background. That felt good.

Who knew that using a timer could be such a good thing?

As an aside, I've been using a visual timer when I work. I set it for 45 minutes and focus on whatever task is at hand for the 45 minutes. When I am done, I take a short break or a long break and repeat. It's been helping me feel more focused and productive. When I am working, I am working, and when I am not, I'm not. 

Lots And Lots Of Timed Tomato Paintings

First up, timed orange tomato paintings. For all of these, I used a size 10 brush. For three of them, I gave myself 10 minutes. For the last one, I gave myself 8 minutes, which made me frantic. The one in the upper left-hand corner turned out the best to me and it's the first one I did. It was a busy week, so in this set I did one each day.

#257 - Timed Orange Tomatoes - 8" x 8" - paper

Next up are the timed red tomato paintings. I settled on 9 minutes for each one. This was the right amount of pressure. Ten minutes is becoming a little too long, but 8 minutes is not enough. For the first 3, I used a size 10 brush. Since I made the tomatoes small, I was having trouble with brush control especially with the foliage. For the last one, I used a size 8 brush. The last two on the bottom turned out better to me. The last one looks more apple-like, but the darks on the right side really work!.

#258 - Timed Red Tomatoes - 8" x 8" - paper

I did the first one on 08/31 and did not capture the shape or "weight" of it correctly. After I painted, I tried several quick value sketches of just the tomato. 

Oh No. Not That Again.

I did another set of timed paintings. I'm back to the paint stroke direction quandry, among other issues.

#241 - Onion 4 Ways - 8" x 8" - paper

What I find interesting is that with simple objects, there is no place to hide.

Garlic - 4 Ways

In the most recent set of painting classes, one thing I learned (or learned again) is how helpful it is to mix in a few exercises from time to time. It helps prevent bad habits or getting stuck. I've been feeling as though I am regressing to a tight and fussy place, so I decided to do a page of timed paintings.

#240 - 10 Minute Garlic Paintings - 8" x 8" - paper

 The first one was in the upper left hand corner. I literally felt like a deer in the headlights. It took me 2 1/2 minutes to draw, but I did stay within the 10 minutes. I used a size 8 brush. The right side and bottom is not very true to form.

The second painting was even tougher. In the timer app I use, I thought I had saved settings that included a 10-minute timer with 2 1/2 minute interval reminders. Nope, the interval reminders have to be turned on each time. Since I was not watching the timer and I did not use time well, here is the 10 minute mark. I gave myself some additional time to finish. The colors look very different since this photo was in the basement while the above photo was in natural light.

For paintings 2 to 4, I switched to a Princeton Snap Bright size 10. Actually, I was going to do each one with a different sized brush. Once I picked up this brush, I wanted to continue to play with it. Swoon. This brush is probably 2-3 millimeters wider than the normal size 10 brush I use.  While it was a challenge to use it in a 4 inch by 4 inch space, I really liked how this brush felt and picked up paint. When using it for the backgrounds, it just felt good. For the smaller bits, it felt like being in the kitchen and using a 13 inch chef's knife when I normally use a 9 inch one. It will take some calibration, but I see potential and fun with this brush.

While I'm not fond of any of the results (which is not the point of doing this exercise), I really enjoyed the process of doing these timed paintings. It was both engaging and energizing. After the long string of painting landscapes from pictures, it was good to try and use a viewfinder again (frustrating, but good), use a different paint brush, and just change things up.

One other thing......I get the letters from the Painters Keys by email. They are also available on the web. I really like this part from the 07/03/18 talking about master.

"In George Leonard’s remarkable little book, Mastery, he draws on Zen philosophy and the martial art of aikido. He shows that the mastering of any non-trivial activity can be plotted on a graph where relatively small gains are made at intervals, followed by slight declines — and then by prolonged plateaus where nothing much seems to be happening. Those who become masters, he says, are the ones who learn to live with and accept these plateaus."

To me, this sums up the reason to keep up my daily painting practice. If I want to see any improvements over time, I need to just keep painting. When the end result seems terrible, I need to paint the next day anyway. If I'm in a rut, I need to do something different, but paint anyway. Just keep painting. Just keep painting.

A Trio Of....

I'm a tad obsessed with 4-value paintings of cats. Since it's good to switch things up (even though I am doing the same exercise on the same subject matter, so the irony is not lost on me), I decided to switch a 5" x 7" format and play with background colors. My thought was that if I liked any of these, I could put them into Art 4 Shelter next year.

Here is my work since my last post. Painting in the morning for a few minutes and fitting in additional time when I can has kept me painting each and every day. I've gotten over feeling like I need a big chunk of time to paint. As a result, I paint more and finish more, even though life is very busy!

#162 - Ella In 4-Values - 5" x 7" paper - alternative blue

I am just going to call this one a warm up. My darkest paint color (my second darkest value) should be lighter. Especially when viewed from a distance, the two darkest values merge together. Also, I had trouble using a #8 sized brush. Things just did not gel with this one.

I took several in-progress photos of the next one.

While I really enjoyed the beginning stages of this one, I'm only okay with the finished result on this one.

#163 - Chandler In 4-Values - 5" x 7"on paper, - alternative blue

I was still using the #8 size bright brush on this one. For this one and the last one, I felt as though I regressed away from just doing the shapes and ignoring the details. Plus, it was more difficult to work smaller.

I finished this this morning and like it the best.

#164 - Marvin In 4-Values - 5" x 7" on paper - std palette

I used a #6 brush and that helped. I tried to be less fussy. The picture had the dramatic lighting that has been working well. Working in this way has been a valuable experience and I feel like I am learning tons. It will be interesting to see what creeps into my color paintings when I switch back to those. Although, I'm not quite ready to go back to that. Next, I want to try a few of these paintings using a different color than gray.

From The Shadows

It would be a huge understatement to say that I am enjoying doing 4-value paintings. I am having an absolute blast. Likely, I will do a few more. After that I might tweak it a bit and go for a color other than gray. The gray scale and value finder is turning out to be an invaluable tool.

Here is the start of my new painting. Even with only one color (really two, if you count the background), the cat emerges especially when viewed from a distance.

Here is the finished painting. I like these dark backgrounds, where the cat is emerging from the shadows. This cat, Dorian, has a very level and intense way of looking at me and this technique captures that.

Dorian in 4-values - 8" x 8" - on paper - alternative blue

It's just shocking to me how so little can convey so much, especially with the eyes. When I look at the left eye of the first one that I painted and this one, I can't believe how a few small paint strokes can read so well. I also think these paintings are helping my eyes. For example when I was mixing the second lightest color, I "guessed" with my eyes before checking it with the gray scale and value finder. Hurrah, it confirmed for me that I was pretty close to the value that I wanted. That is one of the reasons that I would like to extend this experiment using colors other than gray.

The Follow Up Painting

In all truth, the idea to do paintings in neutral colors using 4-values began with a homework assignment from Kat Corrigan this spring. The assignment was to paint a sink, preferable a kitchen sink, several different ways with different parameters. One of those was to paint it in gray scale. This assignment made me nutty. At the time, I thought the biggest challenge was figuring out what to do, which mostly had to do with composition. Looking back, some of the other problems were making values distinct enough and finding the shapes in the objects.

For this assignment back in May, I struggled and painted several boring and not very good paintings of my bathroom sink. I never posted any of these at the time, since I was not happy with them. Here is one of them.

May 2017 - gray scale homework

As I paint and write in this blog, I think and write about values and shapes a lot. That, along with the gray scale painting exercise in May, and my new app, Notanizer, percolated and came out as an idea to do 4-value paintings. It turned out to be a good idea. Plus, it was a good painting exercise to use while I was back in my hometown over Thanksgiving visiting family. Part of my comfort zone for painting is being in a familiar place, alone.

I was thrilled with the painting of Hammett in my last post. Generally when this happens, the next several paintings are cursed, since I psyc myself out somehow. Instead, I had another good experience with another 4-value painting of a cat. This is Wingnut.

#161 - Wingnut in 4 Values - 8" x 8" - STD paletteI 

For this one and the one of Hammet, I used a gray scale and value finder tool. After mixing a colors, I checked the color against this tool. I’m still finding that I need to add much more white when going lighter. I added a fifth value and tried to include a tiny bit of the shape of the cat’s body, rather than just the face.

I noticed something new. I tend to be heavy-handed with my brush, so I tried to vary the downward pressure on my brush. If I can keep at it, I hope to be able to paint better cat whiskers.

This experiment has been amazing. It is all about values and shapes. Color and details just don’t matter in the same way that values and shapes do. It’s like values and shapes are the cake and all the rest is the icing.

That Was One Of My Better Ideas

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I figured that I would be distracted (which I am), but I also wanted to keep up with my painting practice. Several days ago, I thought it might be interesting to work on painting in neutral colors and to really, really focus on values and shapes.  My self-assigned game was to pick several pictures and paint from them using 4 levels of values by using the app, Notanizer. I also decided to stay with neutral colors.

Here is the result.

#159 - Hammett in Values - 8" x 8" - STD palette

This was a pretty incredible experience and this painting came together quickly. This exercise helped with a lot of things. First off, I really had to slow down to see the 4 different levels of values when I was looking at the picture. I kept switching between the view to get 3 levels of values versus 4. I could easily see the lights and the darks, but it was hard to distinguish the 2 middle levels of values. It was a bit frustrating to realize this. I think I have two issues. One is that my eyes just aren’t good at seeing values, and I hope to improve over time, plus I don’t always slow down as much as I should. 

I only needed 3 shades of paint to represent 4 values. I decided to mix one shade of paint and paint all instances of that value. This is not my normal practice. I tend to jump around a lot. I painted the second lightest value, followed by the lightest value, and finished up with the second darkest value. What this caused me to do was also to slow down and really think about each paint stroke, place them well, and also make sure that I captured all places that contained the value that I was working. I did have to do some minor touch-ups, where I missed one of the lighter values.  

This is all elementary stuff. It’s the basics, really. I just struggle to slow down and focus enough at times. Many times when I’m painting, my mind races ahead and wants to be further along in a painting than I am.  

Last, but not least, when I was done and stepped back, it was surprising at how much the fussy little details don’t matter.  The basic shape and parts of the cat read just fine without them.

What To Do With The Blues

The sky was amazing late in the afternoon on Tuesday. I was driving to a northern suburb and the clouds had all sorts of different textures. Plus, the clouds were dramatically colored from a medium warm gray to bright white. The blue sky peeked out here and there. The different shades of blue were quite varied. I caught myself thinking about brush strokes for the clouds and what color to use to capture the different shades of blue.

Since I struggle a bit figuring out what color to paint the sky and water, I decided to play with my blues. Last night, I experimented with the two blues in my palette, phthalo blue green shade (GS) and phthalo blue red shade (RS), To get the lighter versions, I used titanium white. On the left is the GS. On the right is the RS. In the middle, I mixed the two. Since it seemed like the RS is "stronger", I tried to mix in a bit more of the GS. Who knows what the final proportions were in the mix.

If I remember the sky correctly, I think it was the color of the mixed shade along with something in between the mixed shade and the RS. This was a good experiment. On the palette, the RS just doesn't look like it should be for the sky, but the GS by itself, not surprisingly, is a little too green for the sky.

Garlic On A Timer and Paint Strokes

I finished the other two timed garlic paintings. Each square was drawn and painted in only 10 minutes. It's a really good exercise. I like the shape of the one in the lower left corner. Although, it would have been better to leave a shadow under the little stub of a stem to help anchor it.

Before I painted, I did another paint stroke thing. It's a really fun warm up exercise. Plus, it's helping me figure out how to get more paint on my brush. I can also work on how much pressure to use and think about leaving gesso showing through.

Drawing Exercises

Here are some drawing exercises from the book, Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner.  This may not look very exciting, but it was fun to do.

Value Study - Take 1

I indulge in a different hobby every Monday night, making it hard to find the time to paint.  To get better at mixing paint colors and seeing color values, I decided to do a quick exercise.

My goal is to replicate the values along the gray scale with a different paint color each week.  My self imposed rules are:

• Start with a color that you think will fall in the middle of the scale at 5.
• Bounce around the scale.  Don't go completely in order, but try to stay with the same color.
• At each point on the scale, use the same paint color on a paper primed with black gesso and paper primed with white gesso.
• Just mix the colors.  Don't get slow and fussy.  

I ordered a gray scale and value finder  (along with paint brushes) which should arrive this week and should make it easier to evaluate the results.

This week I mixed a saturated purple.  Big surprise!!  Here's what I see in this first attempt:

• My first color was pretty close to a 5.  
• Especially on the black background, the values are too close.
• On the white background, the mid-range colors were purple-red, while the lights and darks were bluer.
• My lighter valued colors need to be much lighter.  This is not a surprise to me.  Hopefully, this helps with my color-mixing.

This was fun and I have 4 more weeks, so I can see what happens as I keep trying this.