Brian Blood Demo and Lecture

Last weekend was a beautiful one, spent in Carmel, CA. Three and a half hours drive, I went with two of my students to meet Brian Blood. We all love his work, and I have for a long time.
He painted a 24x30" seascape/landscape. He used a small study painted on sight and some photos for reference. Not many suprises, and no new information really except that he uses an acrylic underpainting, usually burnt umber. I've never tried it. When you get up close to his paintings, you can see part of the underpainting still there and I love that. His paintings are moody quite often, and he showed us how he contributes to that effect quite easily by using Liquin as a varnish, tinted with paint. Interesting, and it works!

Brian Blood      The beginning of "Lovers Point"

Some of the points he talked about while sketching in with a dry #2 brush using burnt umber - were composition, porportion/shapes, interaction, drama, pattern, overlap, atmosphereic perspective, etc. He uses Q-tips to wipe out what he doesn't want.

As he began using color he said to look for and establish the big masses...move around the picture plane. Keep your palette organized. Create areas for each family of tones....

Let moments happen! Leave spaces to represent where the lights will go.

HAVE A PARTY WITH YOUR BRUSH!

Save those big juicy strokes - strong statements - for the END of the painting.

He also reminded us that the worst thing you can do is over work your painting.

In the sky he used nice even transitions. Use a different treatment in your sky than in the middle ground and foreground. 

 Use a dimmer switch and gray down your colors - then you can "pop" your colors better later!

Now after the block in, let it set up. Then go back and refine and compare and develope. Think about any focal point adjustments. Don't render, but go for the SHAPE AND COLOR to describe an object.

His studio was beautiful and large and we got to see a lot of his paintings up close. It was nice to meet him and his wife and we met some nice ladies who lived there locally. Later we went to dinner and on Sunday spent the afternoon browsing the gallerys in Carmel by the Sea. Lovely!

 

 

This is Renee' with Monet' at the New Masters Gallery.

 

It was a beautiful drive home....we had to stop for the cows!