Using the "Viewfinder"

Still Life Study   by Randy Blasquez   10x12"    Oil on Linen Panel    $350

Painting from life, inside or outside requires first deciding on the boundary or size of your canvas. My favorite shortcut to this is to use a viewfinder. Think of looking through a camera to see your subject. My favorite one on the market is called the "View Catcher", and was invented by artist, Patti Andre'.
The View Catcher will adjust to the size your require with a simple slide of the handle. I like to do two or better, three thumbnail sketches of my subject in different sizes before I decide on my composition. This way I know I have conjured up some creative ideas - a sampling of shapes, values and borders.
The way it works is that it will block out the area around your subject while you adjust the distance from your eyes. Move it until you find a pleasing composition. It will allow you to zoom way in and crop for a dramatic composition or pull back and away to allow more into it.
For more information go to www.viewcatcher.com

A Week With Ovanes Berberian - continued

I kept notes from the workshop and I wanted to post them. It's just not the same as being there! But what Ovanes instructed us to do is something I didn't want to forget. Most importantly though, I came home started painting - with difficulty - to get more comfortable with using more paint.
Ovanes uses tons of paint on his paintings. When he demonstrated on my canvas, I began to understand just how much paint he loads onto his brush. But before he begins painting, he uses linseed oil to loosen the paint to make sure it is all the same consistency. He calls it "juicy paint".

Shipwrecked by Ovanes Berberian

Peonies by Ovanes Berberian

Ovanes Berberian notes….

Being an Artist~

Lose your sleep over this!

Have a mentor.

If you find your mentor you will know it.

Go to Museums and sketch what you love, then go home and paint a piece of it.

You’ve got to be a sensitive person.

You’ve got to have results.

Classic painting never dies.

Theodore Lucas was one of Ovanes's mentors.

The hungrier your get the better it tastes.

So be hungry – don’t get satisfied by other things.

On painting ~

Steps to a better painting,

Draw

Wash

Redraw

Paint

Clean Everything

Flat Large Shapes

Simplify

One Value when washing, not so dark to start.

When you use dark, scrape to keep dark = no texture.

Use a wash with beautiful color using pure pigment or tone your canvas with a wash of pthalo blue and paynes gray (1/4 to ¾)

You can also use a warmer wash.

For your wash use turpentine and Damar varnish, about ½ and ½.

Look for the “key” when you do your wash.

When you do your wash every square inch should be clean….even your grays.

Do not mix your family colors in your wash, only pure pigment in the same “family”

Design~

Design is number one- If you don’t have a beautiful design don’t bother to paint it.

Value is most important.

RGH paint is very good.

Begin with flat shapes and two values for each object.

Middle key paintings- Overcast days make you paint in middle key.

Sunny days- You paint light and shadow.

Remember the light source, the sky color.

You must feel it.

Lilac flower – use burnt umber with a touch of Alizarin in your wash for the warm shadow of the flower.

If you learn to see it then you can paint it.

Use temperature to turn the vase.

Better to stop before you ruin it.

Do quick studies, small- 6x8 and 8x10.

Tone your boards and staple them on a board, go out and paint.

The shadow is effected by the blue in the sky.

No Fear- Be brave and make mistakes.

The name of the business is frustration.

Correct Temperature = Good Harmony

IMAGINE

Paint beautiful shapes with beautiful outlines.

Paint flat and blend.

Don’t be timid.

What matters is what is happening on the canvas, don’t copy everything you see but make the painting work.

Design your light pattern.

Build on your darks.

Paint the flat large shapes. Use your palette knife to lay in Large Flat Shapes – it helps you get the dark rich value – then Scrape Lightly.

Blend to soften your edges.

Use brush control.

Simplify

When you start with the washes, not so dark to start.

Medium key to start.

When you start with a palette knife start with dark then scrape it, no texture yet.

In the finish use only two values, and finish with a highlight, that is all.

No detail for the first year.

Stay flat then get warm and cool.

In the daylight don’t forget your cool colors.

The best areas are simplified.

Get the contrast and color in the colors.

It takes a lifetime to get color.

Start with composition.

Balance light with shadow on the table top.

Painting Inside~

Put your lights in the foreground when you set up your still life.

Also some lights at the top to make the middle (table) come forward.

Have tones to 8 at most for flowers and lilacs.

Hold back on your lights.

Be very selective with your final brush strokes.

Blend up and down.

Try going two values lighter on your palette using whites.

(or) Start with raw colors for your wash.

Make white your thinnest paint, very lose.

Black makes true nature colors, try starting with black and white, then add color

After you design your painting go away and come back, look again.

Don’t forget to push the background back.

A Week With Ovanes Berberian

I first met Ovanes Berberian in the summer of 2006. He is a good friend and mentor of Brigitte Curt whom I have known and studied with for several years. She and her husband Jim had spent many hours working with him through the years.
Before this I discovered his work and was in love with it so when they suggested to their classes that they should join them in Idaho for a couple of weeks I jumped on board. It was an amazing experience that changed me. It also was overwhelming and the weeks were intense. I hated my paintings, and felt like a baby learning to walk. Jim and Brigitte told me this going in, but they also told me that what I would hear and see at the workshop would continue to guide my painting for many years to come.
Last November I posted about my trip to Pacific Grove for a weekend of plein air painting with Ovanes. He was much more verbal in his teaching and my brain somehow was able to comprehend it better this time, so I decided to go back to Idaho.
Idaho is beautiful. The vast countryside and skies were begging for me to paint them. However we stayed in Ovanes's yard for a week of plein air painting of these amazing floral arrangements. If I could have I would have stayed another week or two. I was just getting started.
I returned last night from the twelve hour drive. My artist buddy Renee and I took two days and it wasn't all that bad. We decided it was better to drive so we could pack our supplies and it was the right thing to do. I'm ready to do it again!

Anyway, I wanted to post during the week but I couldn't get an Internet connection. The little motel we stayed in, the  South Fork Inn, did have it, but it was down for several days. I want to tell you about my week while it is still fresh in my mind.
The most important realization for me was what I learned about Ovanes. He was so passionate about sharing his love for making art with us it really touched me in a way I don't think I can describe. But somehow I felt that we share that passion. Only he has been able to disconnect from our crazy business that is such a part of our lives. I am right in the middle of it.
Just being in Idaho and away from the computer and the daily obligations of life gave me a taste of what it takes to really be in touch with creating art. It is something close to worshipping our God. I have never before been able to slow down long enough to understand this. I have read about it. I understand it and believe it, but today I get the connection. A wonderful book about this walk with God through creating art is written by a Pastor at my church, "Imagine That" by Manuel Luz.
http://manuelluz.wordpress.com/book/

I'll post more photos and my experience that last week very soon!

Color Mixing &Value Workshop This Week

These past couple of weeks we have been learning about color and value in the beginning oil painting classes at the School of Light and Color.

I was surprised and delighted that these students were more than willing to use their class time to make charts. I have a wonderful group of students both on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday mornings at the school. These students want to do the work in order to learn. I know it's tough to come into a class as a beginner, especially when we feel that everybody else knows more than we do. But if you can take that risk  and show up, you find out that we are all students, and eventually we figure out that it is a lifetime journey and not a quick study. I love it when one of the gals or guys fall in love with the process, and after getting through the initial stunning fact that it isn't as easy as they thought, become willing to take on the challenge. It is so exciting to see that look on their faces as they light up with an "Aha" moment. 

Anyway, back to the exercises. We drew some one inch squares and put the complements on either side. It is surprising what you can learn by doing simple exercises like mixing complementary colors to make beautiful grays. We mixed the a little of one complement into the other, then a little more, then half and half. It was also interesting to begin to mix white into these mixes where the beautiful grays began to emerge.

We talked about the importance of using grays in your painting, and that it is also important to use value to state a predominant - middle and little value design in your paintings.

Then we made value charts using color, first using black and white to light and darken, and the other using analogous (colors next to our main color on the color wheel) colors to keep as much chroma (rich color) in our mixes as possible.

We talked how to use value changes to turn a form and how value and color are dependent on what you are comparing it to. We squinted to see our values.

After that we made a value scale in black and white, then found paint colors from the tube and matched the value on the scale. After using tube color, we used mixes and found the value using the same scale.

I believe these exercises are invaluable....because we actually learn from DOING. It's all fine to read about this stuff in the art books and magazines, but we will miss the connection if you don't actually do the work. Also, we will learn more from making mistakes than if we don't make mistakes. So we were freed up to make them!

My hope is that when these students are painting their next painting they will reach for a color/value on the palette, and not just think in color alone. They will begin to see value and color all around them. It is not easy but I'm hoping that they will begin to group smaller shapes into larger value shapes, and then begin to design a painting using these concepts. It will take time, and we can only learn so much at a time, so sometime in the next 6 months we probably do this all over again.