34th Street Corner 8 x 6"
Yesterday in my Tuesday class I did a demonstration en plein air. It was a beautiful day and I had scouted out a scene just outside the studio doors at
Patris Studio and Gallery. I was rusty. I haven't been out there lately and well, I'm teaching a plein air workshop soon, so I needed to do it.
My students thought I was doing it for them.. ha ha.
It was a perfect example of what happens when you pick a scene for the concept of painting the light and shadow, then the sun goes away and you are lost! Anyway, it was great practice for me and good for them too I hope..
I wrote an outline (that turned out to be kind of a book) for the people going to France with me and sent it out via email a couple of days ago. The thing is, it's seems it would be good for anybody not just the workshop. So I've decided to post it here.
Painting in the South
of France 2013
Welcome. I wanted to provide you with an
outline of some of the things we will be talking about these two weeks, as we
trek out to paint the beautiful landscape of Southern France..I can’t imagine a
better place to be while we immerse ourselves into the art of painting in plein
air. Some of you have painted out of doors before, but for others, this will be
a new experience.
Either way, I’m sure it will prove to be a life changing
event. I believe the beauty of spending two whole weeks focused on painting
this way will advance your skills in a huge way… For one thing, we don’t have
the pressures of our home life, the kids, husbands, housework, grocery runs,
work, etc., to take our attention away from our focus. And another thing,
because we are working at this every day we are bound to grow in our
appreciation of what we are observing while learning at the same time to really
see it from a different point of view.
While we have had our eyes to see from birth, we have become
accustomed to taking for granted what we are looking at.. Our brains have a
tendency to take over our eyes and our eyes get lazy. We have developed a habit
of relying on what we “think” something looks like, and forgetting to just
really look.
So, for the reasons I have stated above, I am going to ask
you to try to learn to turn off what your brain may be telling you about what
you are seeing. Instead, use your eyes to really observe..
To do this, it will take a commitment on your part because it does not come naturally. Here are a
few suggestions:
When we arrive at a location, don’t rush around thinking you
will run out of time. Instead, leave your supplies while you take the time to
walk around the area. Allow your breathing to slow down. Ask your heart to tell
you where to stop and paint. If you think you may be in the right location,
stay there for a few moments and breathe slowly. If you are not sure, just
trust that it will be fine. As you get used to this it will come more
naturally.
If I am doing a demonstration, just relax and put your set
up out where you have decided to paint. Try not to talk too much. Just
appreciate the beauty that surrounds you.
Take your time getting started. Do a couple of notan
sketches. Choose the best one to paint. Consider the format.
Decide what you like most about the scene. This will be your
concept. Make a note of it. While painting, consider this to be what the
painting is about. For example, the warm light on the distant trees, the light
and shadow of the scene, the reflection of the water as it moves, the red
poppies as they meander through the meadow, etc.
The above ideas are considered the plan. I believe that this
stage, the planning stage, is the most important part of your painting
experience. When you have a plan, the painting session is most likely to be
successful. Don’t rush the plan.
We will be getting down to the nuts and bolts of designing your work in a simplified manner to emphasize your idea and
inspiration.
Design is when you take your idea and put it into a
composition. Composing, or Design, is
the second most important part of painting and is part of the plan.
While here we will be doing a couple of exercises to help us
learn to see better, to plan our painting and have a better design.
We will practice learning to see the values in our landscape
by painting small black and white value studies. We can do this on paper or
canvas, it is up to you and how you planned your supplies. Either way, these
little studies will be tiny like our thumbnail pencil sketches. By using paint
instead of the pencil, we will learn to stay out of the details, and just
capture the initial idea or concept,
and find the best design.
We are using a double complementary palette while here. That
means on our palettes we have a warmer and cooler version of the three primary
colors on the color wheel.
Lay out your palette the same every day. Start with white at
the lower left corner. Up the left side from there is yellow ochre, cad yellow
medium, leave a space for orange, cad red light, rose, alizarin crimson, leave
a space for violet in the corner at the top (approximately). From there move to
the right across the top: ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, Pthalo blue, room for
greens. At the top right start with transparent oxide red, then down the right
with payne’s gray or black, and then your mixed grays.
Before you begin, mix your secondary colors in between the
primaries.
Mix orange by starting with Cadmium Yellow, then add small
amounts of warm red (Cad Red Light), until you reach a rich orange tone.
Mix a violet by using Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine blue
for a striking and powerful violet. Add a little tiny bit of white so you can
judge the mixture, checking to see that it is a violet and not too red or blue.
While outdoors I most often will mix a more subtle violet if I am painting the
mountain ranges. Start with Cobalt Blue, then add Cad Red Light to the mix a
little at a time until you get a warm violet tone. Add a little white to it.
Add ultramarine if it is too dull and needs more blue.
For your greens, I suggest you mix a warm and a cool and
maybe a gray green. Start with Ultramarine Blue and add Cad Yellow for the warm
green. Go cooler for the next one by starting with Ultramarine again and this
time add a small (tiny) amount of Pthalo blue. For a grayish green mix Cobalt
Blue with Yellow Ochre. You can adjust these with more yellow or more blue to
get what you want. You may just want to stick with one or two greens at a time,
unless your scene has many greens.
For wonderful harmonious results in your painting, mix these
secondary piles with each other to get wonderful grays. My favorite mix for
painting the distance in a landscape is to mix the dull or subtle violet with
one of the greens… Add primary color to get more colorful grayed out mixes.
Then mix your gray values. You will want at least two, but
three is better. A middle gray, light grey and dark gray. Begin mixing your middle
by starting with a large pile of white, add black a little at a time until you
reach the correct value. Check with me at this point. From here, use some of
your middle gray and add more black to get the dark gray. For the light gray
start again with white, ad a tiny amount of black. You may also use your gray
piles of light, middle and dark paint to adjust values of your paint piles.
Check the lighting conditions. Where is the sun coming from?
Where is it headed? Place your umbrella directly at the sun. Try to get your
panel and palette in the same light if possible. If you have the opportunity to
paint in a shaded area, make sure it is not dappled light or that it is
creating a silhouette condition.
In your painting, same thing goes. Where is the direction of
the light? Look for light and shadow.. Consider that in the outdoors the
shadows aren’t as dark as you think. They are usually colorful with a
combination of warm and cool, but with cool dominating. The cool of the shadow
will contrast with the warm of the sun.
In the light areas look for brilliant color, using warm
against cool, but with warm dominating. The warm light comes from the sun and
the cool tones come from the blue of the sky.
I spend a lot of time in my classes talking about value. If
you don’t learn to see and identify the values in your scene you will struggle
with color and the painting will not hold a strong design.
When we pre-mix our palette, I will ask you to make three
piles of gray using black (Payne’s Gray) and White. We will name them – LIGHT –
MIDDLE – DARK. We will most often paint our scene in value first, then color.
Please believe me, this will make for more success.
Why do certain paintings gain acclaim? The answer is most
likely the harmonious arrangement of dark and light that creates an impression
of beauty, regardless of the colors used or the subject matter. This is called
“notan” from the Japanese word that means “dark/light harmony”.
Use no more than three values of gray plus black and white
for your NOTAN painting. Your notan painting is what you do to learn how to
create a solid design for your painting. When you paint the scene again , the
color study, you will use the values that you designed while creating your
notan study.
After you do it a few times, it will become a good habit to
use with all of your paintings. Again, planning a strong design is the only way
to start each one.
I have asked you to bring small canvas panels because I want
to concentrate our efforts on painting studies. A study is just that, a
practice piece to use as reference for larger paintings. When you paint a lot
of studies, you learn a lot!
We can capture the essence of a scene with more than enough
information by painting small. This way we will have time to paint more than
one painting in any location. You will learn to paint faster. You will learn to
stay out of the details.
When you walk into a gallery or museum, and you spot a
painting from across the room and you are drawn to it, it is because the artist
captured the essence of a scene in a masterful way. The science behind this is
that our eyes are drawn to the dark and light patterns of the painting that
create the design. A strong design is created by using a dark pattern in your
painting, in a lyrical way that is put together or composed in a way that is beautiful. A strong design will attract
our eye from across the room.
We will be practicing this design concept with our black and
white notan paintings and then we will incorporate that design into our color studies.
Begin your color study by toning the canvas. I like to use a
very transparent warm color. After this you will lightly sketch the basic
design of your painting using the notan as reference to find the no more than
seven to ten shapes.
Shapes are what divide the painting when you squint. You must squint in order to
“see” what to paint. Every artist paints shapes. What makes this difficult for
the beginner again is that our eyes don’t naturally see this. We see the whole
of what is in front of us, but we must squint in order to divide the value shapes.
After the design process we will be ready to pre-mix our
paint colors for our painting. We will be mixing approximately 5 of the general
or “mother” colors and values for the design we’ve created already.
Start with the darkest value shape. Squint at the whole of
the shape. This will bring the variations of color and value within that shape
into one value color. This is what you
are aiming for when you mix.
Start with the color on your palette that is closest to what
you want. Take time here to get what you want. If the value is wrong, the
painting won’t read correctly. You need to match the value as best you can. But
also consider that we are outside you will have to just get as close as you can
while remembering that everything will look lighter out there. So lean on the
idea of going darker than what you might think. “When in doubt, go slightly
darker”, is my motto.
Moving on from the darkest shape, mix your middle values.
Compare the value to the darker pile you have already mixed. The middle key
colors will have more color or chroma. Then
mix your lights. Consider that the lights that we call our “mother colors”, are
not the lightest light in the painting. The darks are not the darkest darks. We
call them our “mother colors”, because it is a starting point for your
painting, a general or overall value and color for the “shape” you have
designed..
Now paint your shapes, using just paint, no medium and a dry brush. Keep the paint thin and vary
your brushstrokes, leaving some of the tone underneath. This is called the
“block in”.
Now that you have covered
the canvas, take a break and observe your painting as a whole. Step back
and use your mirror. Are your shapes and values working? Make adjustments.
Now you will really lay it on thick. Go for bold. Use the
piles you have mixed, but mix your variations next to them, using the pile as a
base for your mixes. Use the correct
value, but make it more colorful. Adjust values and temperature.
Finally, the Highlights
and Accents
This is the finish. Think about the concept of your painting and paint the final lights and darks. Say
what you want to say here with the focal point. Use plenty of paint.
Remember, the light strokes will guide the viewer’s eye
through the painting so look for a pattern
of light. Also remember that the dark shape is the foundation of your
painting that will say “beautiful” if the design of the shape is lyrical and
flows nicely.
