Jac’s 100 days of skies and trees

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Viewing 15 posts - 76 through 90 (of 141 total)
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  • #2760096
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day xx 14/10/2022

    • I read some Hawthorne
    • I finished a demo on Introduction to Portrait Painting.
    • I also watched the section of Beginners Guide To Drawing on 3d forms, but haven’t done the assignments yet.
    • I briefly worked on my previous landscape sketch. I also gave up on my de Gheyn study – it was just so awful and I was rushing it.
    • I started a “long pose” portrait sketch. Man is it a wrestling match… a work in progress. I’m going to try and finish it before the coaching session tomorrow, but there are a few things I want to finish.

     

    Hawthorne

    • “Do not let it look as if you reasoned too much. Painting must be impulsive to be worth while – if you are a painter there is an aesthetic excitement about painting which is one of the most beautiful experiences that can be. Put things down while you feel that joy”.
    • “Realise the value of putting down your first impression quickly”

    Indoor Model

    • “If in painting a head you encounter difficulty… you should go after the big spots, the relation of the figure against the background, the light spot of the figure against the shadow of the figure, first establishing highest light and darkest shadows”
    • “Half of the likeness lies in the colors – they are the first things we recognize”. [seems unlikely]
    • “The first color you put down influences you right straight through. Do not put things down approximately – you will start with a wrong note of color and unconsciously key everything to it, making it false”.
    • “Study by doing fresh starts and stopping when you tire. If you get it into your head that you do not have to finish a thing then you will be able to stop while it is still right”
    • Keep your eye over the whole surface; turn the canvas upside if needed to really see.

     

    Practice Time: 4h

    #2760383
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day 70 15/10/2022

    • sort of finished up the landscape sketch… but inevitably I look over at it casually and think of bits I want to change. But I’d say it’s 95% there. It’s funny how your own opinion of stuff you do changes as the piece progress – some, like this one, I start by really liking but lose enthusiasm for it by the end. Others come good from a bad start. All part of the fun.

    • I’m also calling this portrait sketch ‘done’. I was going to try and refine it as much as I could, but I think I’d actually benefit from just more experience starting new pieces.

    • I also started a plaster cast drawing of David’s eye, but I couldn’t be bothered to take a photo. I’ll finish it tomorrow.

    Kearns

    • Don’t paint individual things. Group items together where you can, this simplifies passages and eliminates repetitive shapes.
    • Paintings needs a subject; make sure yours has one clear subject.
    • Avoid a ‘three striper’ composition; where there are three linear bands (e.g. lake, trees, sky). Break up the shapes.
    • Avoid tangents and unwanted alignment of edges.
    • Shadow colours are not darker versions of the light colours; they’re totally different colours.

    Practice Time: 3h

    #2760385
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Oh and also, as I’m gathering the week’s work into a single image for the coaching sessions, I may as well add it here.

     

    #2760458
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day 71 16/10/2022

    • Started an outdoor sketch. A fairly unproductive hour or two; close to being worthy of scraping back and starting again. But I think I’ll let it dry and see if something good can be made with it.  It was fun being out nonetheless.

    • I finished up a cast drawing. Nothing fancy, and on fairly rough paper, but my plan is do weekly cast drawings (and perhaps rewatch parts of the Russian course) so I don’t lose what I’ve learned.

    • I’ve done a fair bit of reading, Alla Prima II, Hawhtorne on Painting, Kearns AND The Art Spirit. Nerd alert!

    Alla Prima II

    (Colour and Light chapter)

    • “See it right, mix what I see right, and then stick it where it belongs”
    • Remember that in painting, colour is due to the reflection of light off of paint.
    • The colours we work with are subtractive. ie. Red paint looks that way because it is absorbing all other colours and reflecting red.
    • You cannot duplicate light itself with paint.
    • Tertiary colours contain all three primaries and are, therefore, of the brown and gray colour.
    • Palette colours (unlike actual light) do not have specific colour temperatures. How they appear is related to the ambient light and the pigment already on the canvas. The same grass in the same scene will require different temperatures in different light effects.

    Hawthorne on Painting

    (Indoor Model)

    • “It must be a correct colour spot first; if that colour spot is not right it is nothing, it is only paint… the moment you get this thing right, almost without trying the face becomes a living thing, and that is the time to make it into the thing you want.”
    • “You are trying to make your form and coloring it, instead of letting your color make the form. Try to get the note of this color in relation to that, and not the form of it”.
    • “Do not neglect the background, it is a vital part of the picture” (of a portrait)
    • “Feel the skull under the hair. Study carefully where the hair meets the flesh.”
    • “In doing hair, do not overdo the spray of the hair; look at the mass with the mass of the face, see how simple it becomes”
    • “Memory work is usually done by artists who have painted all their lives – don’t patronize nature, we should be very humble.”

    Practice Time: 4h

     

    #2760879
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day xx 17/10/2022

    A very unproductive day, despite putting a lot of time into practising.

    • I finished watching the BGD lesson on week 4 forms, and did one of the assignments. I’ll try and complete the others tomorrow.

    • I started a portrait sketch and it went…. well, just bad. I literally spent 2 hours just pushing paint around, struggling. I’ll see if it can be salvaged tomorrow.

    • I also worked for 30 minutes for some final points on the landscape. Definitely calling it done now.

     

    Practice Time: 4h

    #2761427
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    19/10/2022

    Oh no, falling behind on my entries again. Not a very productive day unfortunately.

    • 30 minutes trying to salvage a portrait, binned it after putting in too much time for a little sketch. I must have scraped it back 3-4 times. I’m unsure what it proved so problematic compared to the others – I think it was due to the strong reflected light and subtle halftones. Here’s how it looked before I gave up:

    • 1 hour getting started on a mastery copy.
    • 30 minutes making changes to the landscpae I started on the weekend

    Kearns

    I read a fair few blog entries covering an historic outline of American landscape painting, not too many points to note but interesting stuff. But he does have this to say about Barbizon ‘style’ in contrast to Hudson River School:

    • Concerned with visible surface and paint handling
    • subordinate detail for a more poetic look
    • less dramatic scenery, often intimate views of an ordinary scene

    Whereas Hudson River School:

    • enamelled surface, extreme detail
    • sprawling vistas

    Also a useful piece of advice -> Connect your darks in one unified shape – don’t be patchy.

    Practice Time: 2h

    —-

    20/10/2022

    I’m not having a particularly productive week in terms of output – everything is a bit of a battle. Fiddly and unnatural. Some weeks are just like that. Call it coincidence, but I often feel that ‘bad’ weeks follow good. Perhaps your standards rise in good weeks, only to foster disappointment the next week when you return to your average progress. Whatever the reason, it can quickly become demotivating when nothing is coming out right – so good to stick with it and just churn out work, I think.

    • I’m continuing my master study of Jules Dupre’s Fontainebleau Oaks. I always find Dupre’s trees to be enchanting. I’m learning a lot from this piece already – the importance of a strong silhouette, the application of Kearn’s advice to have one unified dark shape, and more. It has a few more hours in it yet.

    • I also continued on the landscape I started on Sunday. I’m very ‘meh’ about it. I quite like the handling of the tree – but maybe it’s difficult to portray a stone cottage without it being a bit twee? I’ve enjoyed pushing around the composition. Despite being a piece started outdoors, I’ve made so many changes it’s almost entirely imaginary at this point.

    • I also completed 1 hour of BGD practice.

    Kearns

    Not too much reading today, just a few points:

    • Landscapes are more visibly made up of blue (sky) and blue/yellow (green grass/foliage). Red is more hidden. It tends to act as a modifier of other colours, woven throughout a piece.
    • Good colour in a landscape calls for recognising the role various reds have in the colour notes of a painting. Almost every beginners fails to get enough red into their pictures.
    • Always look for ways to vary your greens – step on them a little.

     

    Practice Time: 3h 

     

    #2761656
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day 72 21/10/2022

    • I finished watching a long pose demo from Introduction to Portrait Painting. It’s definitely more difficult trying to learn from a time-lapsed audioless demo.
    • I also watched a bit of BGD lessons on light/shadow – will finish tomorrow and hopefully do the assignments.
    • I spent a bit of time on a portrait sketch, trying to keep it more in the spirit of the assignments of simple forms quickly (avoiding getting into the detail of each feature) and using colour to depict plane changes/avoid overmodelling. After I totally bombed on a portrait earlier in the week, I was pleased this one came together quickly.

    • I worked the rest of the evening on my Dupre master study – but forgot to take a picture.

    Kearns

    He covers myths he thinks are wrong:

    • Happy accidents. Who wants accidents in their painting? Nothing good gets into a painting by accident. Plus paintings are supposed to be expressive and full of intent.
    • “It takes two to make a painting. One to paint it, one to stop him from ruining it”. Loose is how a painting should look, not how it’s made. Kearns think a lot of paintings are undercooked and unrefined, especially plein air. “I believe a painting has no reason to exist other than that it be well made”
    • “Originality is the most important thing in a work of art”.
    • “Great artists must starve and die in obscurity”

     

    Practice Time: 3h

    #2761824
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day 73 22/10/2022

    • I’ve done some reading – Alla Prima 2
    • I worked for a bit on the master study – I think I’ve extracted most of the learning available, so I’ll give this another hour tomorrow and call it quits.

    • I also worked for a while on last week’s landscape. I’m not continuing this further, I’ve pushed paint around enough to know it’s not panning out – key is to figure out why, exactly.

    • I also snuck in a quick cast drawing in hard charcoal pencil. I need to go back and rewatch the specific sections of the Russian Drawing course to reinforce some of the learning.

     

    Coaching Session w/ Joshua

    • I watched the couple hours of coaching, and thoroughly enjoyed my 10 minutes in the sun. We discussed my goals. Joshua described them as a ‘dead art’ and that I struggled to find instruction that would teach the methods/approaches employed pre-impressionism. This holds up to my experience thus far, where few courses are teaching indirect painting of any kind.
    • Recommendations:
      • Start Villpu’s figure drawing course, learn more about gesture.
      • Start sketching outdoors, assembling elements that you can compose into assembled scenes in the studio.
      • I think botanical drawings got a mention?
      • Read the artistic anatomy of trees – which I own, have started, but need to start again. It’s a bit dense, but has a lot of good info.
      • Research old master drawings – notably Tintoretto, but also Titian and Rembrandt.

     

    Alla Prima II 

    • Adding white to a mixture not only lightens it, but makes it cooler and less saturated. White is the coldest pigment on your palette. This can help you when the light source is naturally cool.
    • To portray light warm colours, you must compensate when adding white by also adding warm colours – yellow/reds.
    • Colours are at their most intense in the middle-to-light value range. So high contrast light effects often produce less colour, especially when you have to squint due to brightness – which reduces colour perception further.
    • Above a certain value, adding white just makes colours appear chalky – this is due to a loss of colour intensity. This can be avoided when white is added to the darkest pigments (ultramarine, aliz. crimson, thalo green, thalo blue)
    • Problem: painting a bright orange sunset. The solution is to paint the temperature of the streak compared to its surroundings, rather than the brightness. Colour temperature relationships are key to seeing colour.

    The Palette and Vital Charts

    • “Flemish” palette of fewest number of pigments possible: three primary yellows, two primary reds, two primary blues, three earth colours, and an all purpose green.

    Hawthorne on Painting

    • No amount of good drawing will pull you out if the colours aren’t true.
    • Do not put things down approximately – you will take a wrong thing and unconsciously key everything to it.
    • “What I want you to do is to make many palette knife sketches, small, simple, of three tones only if possible, showing the time of day, and the weather conditions” Oof this would be tough.
    • “If it’s a bad one you can do all you know in twenty minutes. Stat a new one. I don’t want you to work one minute after you don’t know what you’re doing”.
    • “Make a lot of starts; wait till later to try to finish things. Do three or four of these studies every day”
    • “Don’t be afraid of mixing your colors. Some of the most beautiful colors in a canvas are nothing but mud when taken away from their combination”

    Practice Time: 3h 30min (A lot of work, a good day)

    #2762214
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day xx 23/10/2022

    • I spent a couple hours on Beginner’s Guide to Drawing, just drawing a still life. It was humbling and frustrating. Bloody cup opening was too flat, just wouldn’t sit right and I ended up going too dark. The paper felt course and grainy. Bah…. I do like the paint tube tho.

    • I finished the master study as far as I’m going to take it… fun and challenging in equal measure. Picked up a few things from it.

    Alla Prima II

    • It is the colour balance in the light and determines the colour harmony. (I’m not sure I get this?)
    • Once you’ve made colour charts, note that certain colour families prevail – there are columns of red, yellow, orange, green, violet, or blue dominant hues.
    • Achromatic colours are those mixed from all the primaries that are nondescript, no distinct colour family. Think inominate. They always belong to the tertiary group. Browns/greys

    Color Harmony

    • The source of light, or any combination of sources, produces a predominating effect influencing the colour of everything in sight. The colour of the light acts as a common denominator to visually unite everything it illuminates.
    • Therefore, light is what products harmony in a picture.
    • Enjoyment of a colour harmony is not relevant by this definition – this is an emotional response. Colours can be in harmony and you dislike them.

     

    Practice Time: 3.5h

    #2762317
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day xx 24/10/2022

    There is part of me reluctant to count my recent practice days as being towards my skies and trees challenge – I don’t feel I’ve done the deep research and practice I intended when I set out. Just painting the occasional tree wasn’t what I had in mind. On the other hand, just doing what you want has it’s perks too as I’m able to put in some good practice time recently.

    • I watched a lesson of Finding Your Voice As An Artist. I have the last lesson to finish it.
    • I completed assignment 1 of the BGD exercise. I actually found these quite challenging compared to similar exercises in the Russian course… I think it’s the need to do many vs my inclination to fiddle with one for a long time until it’s right.

    • I also spent an hour on colour swatches from an exercise from Alla Prima II. The idea is to mix each colour of your palette with a single colour from your palette, creating a set of charts which essentially show your palette mixed with a predominant colour. It’s useful to learn colour mixing, harmony, and create a set of references to use. I wasn’t as neat and orderly as Schmid recommended. Top chart is yellow ochre dominant, bottom is transparent red oxide dominant.

    Practice Time: 3h 30

    #2762662
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day 74 25/10/2022

    • I spent a couple hours on a portrait sketch – unfortunately I didn’t take an in-progress picture, so I’ll post the finished thing tomorrow.
    • I worked for an hour on a tree sketch after a Constable drawing. It was… unsuccessful. I need to give some thought how to both learn and practice landscape drawing (as Joshua recommended). Right now my skill level is way below that of my other types of drawing or landscape painting (in my opinion)

    Hawthorne  on Painting

    • ‘Nothing cheapens a canvas so much as the same color running through everything. Harmony and vitality come from the use of different colors, not using one color throughout in its variations”
    • “We must all teach ourselves to be fine, to be poets. Spend a lifetime in hard work with a humble mind. In his attempt to develop the beauty he sees, the artists develops himself”
    • “Try coping with different sizes canvases. There is a certain influence that the big area of canvas gives you”
    • “Paint the thing that makes you all a-tremble with its beauty”

    Alla Prima II

    • In the colour chart exercise, note that each chart is harmonious, and also harmonises well with 2-3 other charts. This demonstrates that the predominance of a single colour in a mixture can be used to harmonise a painting – but it is light that determines what colour this is.
    • However, the predominant colour does not always produce the particularly harmony you might be after.
    • See how adding white creates new, cooler colours, which are more harmonious with each other (pastels).
    • Colours are more vivid in the mid-tone range.

    Harmony

    • The light source is made up of a balance of colours and determines the harmony of a picture.
    • Harmony is often about what isn’t possible under certain lighting conditions, what colour is excluded.
    • “To achieve harmony in a painting, it is usually only necessary to recognise the colour predominating in the light illuminating your subject, and then restrain it’s complement.
      e.g. If it is an orange light predominating, then the blues will appear desaturated in the light.
    • If you cannot identify the predominating light because it is evenly balanced, then you must only observe the temperature and stay within the temperature family (e.g. warm lights, cool shadows, or vice versa).
    • Do NOT just pre-mix a single colour into all your mixtures. The problem with this is the predominant colour is different in every mixture and can’t be known up front.

    Practice Time: 3h

    #2762665
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day 75 26/10/2022

    • I watched the Amanda section of Introduction to Portrait Painting
    • Finished up the sketch I started yesterday – pleased with the colouring, though the drawing is wonky. I cut myself off after 3 hours, so I am content with the result.

    • I watched week 6 of BGD and did the assignments, nothing particularly exciting – although I am finding some of the simple geometric shapes surprisingly difficult. I feel like my finished pieces look decent enough, but doing these sketches for 10-15 minutes, they’re pretty weak.

    • I also snuck outside for 30 minutes to do a little outdoor sketching. Not an effective way of practising – need to give this some thought.

     

    Cloudspotters Guide

    Altostratus

    • Mid level cloud
    • Featureless, often stretching across the whole sky.
    • Hard to distinguish between status and cirrostratus – but it contains both water and ice.
    • Sometimes it produces light rain/snow, but often not.
    • It can be thin enough for the sun to show through (translucidus), or thick enough to cause a dark day (opacus).
    • If you see any halo’d light effects from the sun shining through, then it’s actually a cirrostratus.
    • Light passes through as much as 40x more atmosphere during sunset/sunrise as during the day. More of the short blue wavelengths are scattered, leaving red/orange.

    Alla Prima II 

    • Broken colour: let the eye of the observer blend pure colours to form new colours. Popular among Impressionists, but present as far back as Velaquez and Hals two centuries prior.
    • A pure broken colour approach, several things are sacrificed: virtuoso brushwork, subtle and accurate drawing, full range of values, edge work.
    • Schmid chooses to use all the pictorial elements in his work: drawing, edges, values, colour.
    • Overmixing colours can cause them to lose their brilliance – tiny pigment particles slightly separate can cause broken colour within single daubs and swipes.
    • Pigments used transparently have an optical quality different from opaque paint – transparent darks and opaque lights amplify the three dimensional effect. Transparency can be achieved through scumbling, not necessarily by diluting with medium.
    • You can also applying more than one colour to your brush/palette knife to get broken colour. Typically only allows for one stroke, so it has to be accurate.
    • “Richards law of creeping color – what is on your palette will probably end up on your canvas”

    Practice Time: 3h

    #2763384
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day xx 27/10/2022

    • I completed a graphite drawing of David’s Ear – I had Russian Drawing Approach on in the background as a refresher.

    Alla Prima II 

    Composition

    • There is no universal principle, fundamental law, or natural formula for good composition.
    • Knowing what we want to say comes first, the design then follows.
    • Schmids solutions:subtlety – design shouldn’t be obvious or overpowering. Viewer should see the picture first, not the design
    • simplicity – don’t risk confusion
    • naturalness – depict a view the reflects how we normally see things
    • balance between literal and loose – you don’t want to bore
    • Centre designs around question of why you’re painting the subject, what about the subject appeals to you,
    • Compositional basics:Balance – the placement of elements in the picture in such a way that they’re pleasing, and hold the viewer’s attention

    Kearns

    • To get an illuminated ‘blown out’ effect, where the light overwhelms the local colour of the lit object – the colour is reveals in the mid-tones, or even shadows.
    • Lights can tell the story of the light, the shadow the story of colour. Commonly used by Sargent and Sorolla

     

    Practice Time: 2h

     

    Day xx 28/10/2022

    I didn’t practice any art today but I went to London for a Constable pilgrimage, visiting the V&A, Tate Britain and National Gallery in a hectic 8 hour trip. Worth it!

    On the train I start Artistic Anatomy of Trees, what a book! I took far too many notes to write them here.

     

    Day xx 29/10/2022

    • I finished another portrait sketch. In my quest to keep these sort, I left a lot unfinished.
    • I also made another panel to stretch paper on to take outside.

     

    Alla Prima II

    • Harmony is easier to define in the negative. Disharmony is the presence of something that can’t possibly belong. Harmony are the component parts of your picture aligning with your ‘why’.
    • Line of direction is the conspicuous edges of long shapes, or actual lines, which lead an observer through a picture. Ideally, they lead to the point of interest and not away from it.
    • Movement is the use of connected shapes to nudge a viewer’s interest in a painting.
    • Rhythm is the repetition of similar shapes intended to make a picture more pleasant.
    • Pattern – what Bill Perkin’s refers to as ‘value matrix’ of shapes. Patterns of flat light/dark shapes can create unity in a picture, especially when connected.
    • Values – pick a value structure suitable to your motif, sometimes this requires strong contrast, sometimes more subtly.
    • Focal Points – areas of the picture you want your viewer to pay attention to, the spots where lines of direction and movement lead to. Emphasising a point of interest can be done through colour saturation, edges, value contrast, etc.

    Practice Time: 2h 30m

     

    Day 76 30/10/2022

    • I made a few touches to yesterday’s portrait.
    • In a bid to try and draw more landscapes, I got outside for a short time before it started raining. I then brought the piece inside and half-worked from imagination. I honestly don’t know what I’m doing drawing-wise for landscapes, and obvious weakness I’ll try to work on.

     

    Practice Time: 3h

    #2764045
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day xx 31/10/2022

    Not much time practising, unfortunately.

    • I spent a bit of time watching the BGD lectures on thumbnails, and doing the assignments.

    • I started, very briefly, on a Hugh Bolton Jones master study:

    • I read a fair bit of Artistic Anatomy of Trees, too many notes to c&p here. I also finished Alla Prima II.

    Kearns

    Kearn’s top tips for learning art when you can’t go to an atelier full time:

    • Frequent museums and galleries; learn art history
    • Read books about painting; particularly those by artists.
    • Join the best art association in your area.
    • Befriend and shadow professional artists you can learn from
    • Take workshops on painting
    • Join a figure drawing group
    • Copy old master drawings
    • Do memory exercises
    • Enter local shows and galleries
    • Spend as much time practising as you can.
    • Have a supporting community; share ideas.
    • Subscribe to art magazines, clip images.
    • Get good materials, art is hard enough without them.

    Hawthorne on Painting

    • When you lie in your choice of colours, lie convincingly. You shouldn’t show off how you snuck purple into the shadows, it should trick the viewer into only seeing a white shirt in shadow.
    • Acres and acres of canvas are what it takes to make a painter.
    • Notice colours that are near to each other and make them different (especially when shadow of one shape resembles the light of another).
    • The more closely two thigns come together in color the more care you have to exercise in separating them. Look at objects through a hole in a piece of pape rin order to compare the different colors coming together.
    • Funny thing about painting, you don’t know what makes it right but you know when it’s wrong.

    Practice Time: 1h 30m

    #2764414
    JackJack
    Participant
    No points.

    Day xx 1/11/2022

    • I started a portrait sketch of Jeff for Introduction to Portrait Painting. There are a couple models I just can’t seem to paint… Jeff is one of them. No idea why. Psychosomatic probably. It’s a work in progress, another hour to go.

    • I spent another half an hour on the Hugh Bolton Jones study – nothing to show.
    • I started a cast drawing of David’s nose – will post tomorrow.
    • I read more from Artistic Anatomy of Trees, too many notes for posting here. This is my main reading focus, alongside Hawthorne on Painting.

     

    Kearns

    • A composition can often be improved simply by taking out offending elements.
    • This is especially true of ‘local freaks’, things that just look weird in a painting that the viewer won’t get – like a cloud that looks like a fish.
    • Avoid having hard edged or high contrast shapes near the painting boundary, it’ll detract from your focal point.

    Practice Time: 3h

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