Jac’s 100 days of landscape

[Don Xu]

The fall colors are always fun 🙂

[Julia]

Wonderful portrait, congrats!

[Jack]

Thanks Don and Julia!

Day 22 08/11/21

• I tried to remember what I could from Todorovitch’s course on portrait painting and completed a 2 hour portrait sketch.  I must pick the course back up and move onto colour once I’m done with the Russian drawing course – there are too many courses!

I could have spent longer refining the shapes and values – but the practice served its purpose as a bit of a refresher.

Practice Time: 2hrs

[Jack]

Day 23 09/11/21

• Bit of a busy day in work today, so just an hour or so drawing some trees.

Practice Time: 1.5h

[Jack]

Day 24 10/11/21

• I read the first chapter on colour mixing in Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light & Color, a second book by Kevin Macpherson. Looks promising.
• I watched week 5 of Huston’s Creative Compositions.
• I had a fair bit of white/black paint left on the palette from the portrait the other day, so I used it for a couple tree sketches – a bit slapdash.

• Then I thought I’d do a value study of a reference photo ahead of painting a pochade of it. Except, as soon as I got started I realised there were few simple shapes – what attracted me to the picture was the variation of oranges colours that blanketed the whole scene. I kept retrying different value combinations before giving up. Perhaps I’ll return to it when I’m a bit more competent, or perhaps, it’s just not as good a reference as I thought it was.

Finally, my palette knife snapped! 🙁

Practice Time: 2hrs

[Julia]

I actually think it is a good reference, you can design multiple shapes with it, I tried one version,  just as example…

[Julia]

The right middle should be lighter than I made it…now that I look at it 🙂 how to you post a small image? I don’t see how…feel free to delete above image

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Julia.

[Jack]

Hey Julia – I like the texture of your value study, feels very organic – assuming it’s digital too? (I’m very unfamiliar with what’s possible with digital art!).

I make my images smaller simply by hovering over the corner of the image after they’ve uploaded and adjusting them to size. Funnily enough, I added the actual photo as an afterthought and as soon as I saw it real small I thought, “oh, hmm. There is actually something quite workable here”, but by then it was late 🙂 I might “borrow” your study, see if I can whip something together!

Thanks again

[Jack]

Day 25 11/11/21

• I stretched paper for the first time – following the instructions in the Russian Drawing course. It worked a treat.
• I finished Huston’s Creative Compositions. There was a great section about the importance of creating your own mythology, your own truth in your art; creating a world where you invite the viewer in, with rules that bend to the idea you’re promoting. I spend most of my practice time just trying to get better technically, it really got me thinking about what’s worth saying with art. All to come.
• I started to block-in a still life, but it got too dark – so I’ll save it for tomorrow.
• I completed a little painting of some nearby cliffs from reference, not much bigger than a postcode. A bit of an aimless effort to be honest – just trying to get some painting in.

• Finished the day off with a sketch of a gnarly tree trunk. There are a lot of twisted tree trunks where I live, I’d love to spend more time trying to capture them accurately like figure drawing.

 

Practice Time: 3h

[Jack]

Day 26 12/11/21

• I read a chapter of Fill Your Paintings With Light and Color on light and and shadow families. Key takeaway, keep the value range totally seperate. Darkest light should still be lighter than the lighest shadow. I already knew this, but often forget it (like in the value study above).
• I completed a still life.

• I completed the geometric still life exercise for the Russian Drawing course (on the stretched paper, too!).

 

Practice Time: 4h

[Jack]

Day 27 13/11/21

I was away for almost the entire day and only managed to sneak in an hour’s practice before bed.

• I watched the first hour of Russian Drawing on the Asaro head.
• I completed another geometric still life drawing, similar to yesterday’s but in different lighting and coloured pencil… which didn’t erase, proving quite a challenge.

 

Practice Time: 1h

[Jack]

Day 28 14/11/21

• I read a section of Light and Colour on “simplifying shapes for a good start”. There’s a challenge to start 100 block-ins using simple shapes – without developing them further!  He also mentions the S-senses of painting:
  • Starts – the basic foundations of starting a painting are the basis of growth.
  • Simple – keep it simple. (subject matter, painting process, palette, etc)
  • Shapes – Focus on shapes, not things. See your painting as a mosaic of shapes.
  • Soft – In general, try to keep edges soft. Hard edges draw the eye.
  • Sun – Establish a single direction for the sunlight and stick to it.
  • Shadow – place the shadow shapes before light shapes, look at the shadow colour carefully for reflective light.
  • Six Colors  – simplify your palette by using six or fewer colours.
• The only practice I managed today was a measly little cloud sketch. I should definitely do more cloud studies. I need to be more disciplined with my time too.

 

Practice Time: 1h

[Jack]

Day 28 15/11/21

• I spent a couple hours on a sketch. It came out more child-like and crude than I hoped.  I’ve been giving a lot of thinking to how I’m practising because, looking back over almost a month’s worth of paintings, I’m not seeing much improvement. I definitely have more theoretical knowledge, and more familiarity with the tools/process, but I’m not seeing much of an improvement in technique. Perhaps I’ll give it more time and see how things develop.

 

Practice Time: 2h

[Jack]

Day 29 16/11/21

• I attempted a short “copy” of Edgar Payne’s capistrano canyon. I’m a bit embarrassed to put them next to each other! The idea was to try and absorb Payne’s technique for drawing a foreground tree, over all composition, and colour palette somewhat. It felt like a hugely useful exercise, although a foolish challenge to think much of an attempt could be made in a few short hours by a beginner. I especially struggled with getting cool colours into the shadows
• I think next time, I’ll focus on trying to learn just one thing (perhaps just a tree, or colour palette, or composition, etc) to avoid being overwhelmed.

 

Practice Time: 2.5h

[Vera Coberley]

Looking at your Capistrano Canyon study, it seems that compositionally and rendering wise, you’re heading in the right direction – nothing to be embarrassed about! Looking at Payne’s work, there is quite a value contrast between foreground and background, which evokes atmospheric perspective, along with the background’s cooler, bluish hue (not just the shadows, but actually the lighted areas of the shrubs, as well). Value wise, your background isn’t quite that distinguished, and it still seems fairly yellowish-green (I know that photos don’t always show reality)

[Author]

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