Randomness

While walking to the post office I came across these tea cups. They were just sitting there on the sidewalk just like this. I didn't move them or touch them, just whipped out my phone and captured the rather strange scene.

It's been in my head for awhile now, trying to figure out how they got there. What their owners had been doing. Where they went....

There's a story here I can just sense it!

Fiverr: Baby

I thought the expression on this baby photo was just too adorable. Slightly annoyed and slightly amused! I hope she likes her painting!

Fiverr: Doggy

Dogs are pretty fun to paint I think. I wonder when I'm going to get a cat?!

I've been super busy, but that just means I'll have a fair amount of posts coming up!

Free Tickets to Japan?!

I am still very interested in going to Japan, despite not being picked for the  JET program. Oh well, their loss. I would have still gone to Japan even with the earthquakes and the tsunamis and the radiation had I been picked and it would have been great getting to teach and help out.

Though it would have been nice to get paid to do that, I suppose the next best thing would be free tickets.

The catch is I'd have to blog about it.

So really, what catch? I plan on sketching and painting and photographing and just experiencing all the beautiful things there! Of course I'd be learning more Japanese as well.

I suppose that means I have a better chance with more blog followers, a more active blog, more comments. I'd better start working on it!

I can't wait until there is more information. Do you hope to go? Do you want to go? Afraid to go? Is there another place you wish would do this? Let me know!

Artumn Madness: Autumn!

I've been away this weekend, with a fairly unstable Internet connection and no phone signal at all. Yay!

And I did a lot of painting. Yay!

And all the paintings came out badly. Boo!

Which is why I'm updating with photos. I did plein air painting and I guess I was completely out of practice because they turned out fairly badly as finished work. But as color studies and sketches they're pretty good. So I'm going to work on a finished pieced based on what I have done this weekend!

Yay!

Artumn Madness: Arkansas

The leaves have started to change in some areas and even though you don't see bright reds and oranges everywhere yet I've noticed the greens aren't the vibrant young greens we get during spring, and have even started turning from the full green of summer.

I'm up here in Arkansas painting great views like this badly for awhile. I'm much too out of practice in plein air painting and right now I am trying to get better. I've been doing so well I must be having an off day. Plus I've been used to tiny still life work for so long my brain is having a time adjusting. But I am painting. Even if I don't want to show my work! Just a quick photo.

How soon do you first notice the shift to autumn? What do you notice first? Do you have a very pronounced autumn where you live?

Fiverr: Sunflowers

Process: Step by Step

(Edited, because I should apparently not type when I have a raging headache!)

After my friend asked me about my painting process when it comes to drawing from life, I thought it would be best if I show as much of the process as I could. I do try and show myself painting on video fairly often, but a lot of times I'm painting at night and it's a pain to get my camera set up so it can see anything I am doing. I decided that step by step pictures would be a bit more helpful. 

Also, most of my process is fairly left brained. I follow a formula for a good chunk of my set up. But there comes a point of complete right brained-ness where a "how to" or a "step by step" doesn't really work. That's why there is such a jump in the last couple of pictures. But I will do my best to explain my thought process and choices. 

Step One: Choose a Subject

This is fairly simple. I raid the kitchen fruit bowl and my stash of handmade pottery a lot of times. Some people trick  ask friends to pose for them. Other people beg their dog or pet of choice to stay still. Others pay people to sit still for long hours. Clothing optional. And some people go outside and sit. That last one has a fairly different starting point for me. But I'll talk about plein air painting later. Right now, we're just drawing with people or objects in front of us. 

If you can use north light, which is a wonderful cool, diffused, stable, natural light, then YAY! I'd use that. But if I'm painting at night I find it much easier to just turn on a light and have it illuminating my fruit. During the day I use north light though. I'll write a post about why that's the painter's light of choice soon. 

So after you have your fruit arranged and the lights on, what's next?

Step 2: Place the large shape on a toned ground

This is the large shape of your objects. There are several ways to do this, depending on what you are drawing. You can see that here, I just put down the large shape all the fruit kind of made. Because I'm working small, I like doing it this way.

If I were working larger, I would first give myself a margin all the way around the painting. Then I would put down a gesture, before putting down this large shape. I wouldn't have the gesture forming the outside contours of the objects, but focus more on their center placement. More like a constellation than anything.

And the toned ground. Normally I tone with raw sienna, but right now I've been using a lot of shellacked illustration and mat board. The shellac I use is amber colored, and the mat board I use is all sorts of colors. This gives me a fairly wide range from a nice pale amber to /really, really, really/ almost black dark. This was amber on top of a dark orange, so it's darker than even I'm used to. But it was next in the pile.

After this comes

Step 3: Psudo Giacometti and Contour

As you can see I'm obviously not drawing with vertical and horizontal lines as I would were I doing the Giacometti Technique in its purest form. You can however, see where I was using it to figure out where to place the bottoms of the aanar and the top of the lemon. It's very useful that way. I should also probably mention at this point that the photograph I took of the fruit was done fairly low to the table. I was sitting up a good one or two feet above that, hence you can see the top of the aanar in the painting. Remember, I'm painting this from life, and not from any photograph. 

Always be exact in your drawing. If you make a mistake, don't be afraid to correct it! There are several times I redrew parts of the fruit. If you pay attention during this step, the following steps will definitely be easier, but you should always be looking and asking, "Is this right?" and then LOOKING for the answer. Painting is like taking an open book test. The answers are always right in front of you!

Then we come to,

Step 4: Valueshapes

Here is where I start to place dark values down. Most of the time I use burnt sienna for my first shadows, but because the board I used was incredibly darker than I'm used to, I used burnt umber as well.

Here I'm drawing the shapes of the shadows, trying to make sure my line drawings are right. I'm also picking out the dark areas, and asking myself, what is darker? Squinting helps a lot here. It filters out color and hue and leaves you with swatches of dark. I then paint those shapes. I use the unpainted canvas as my lights until

Step 5: Add some lights

For awhile now I've been painting fruit just sitting on a simple white table. So right about now I fill that in so I have paint around all my objects to paint into, and pull to into their form when I need to redraw some things. You can see I've kind of worked it into the lemon here.

Step 6: Relative Color

This is the first step that I'll add color. I won't be really picky about the color, as long as the value is correct. I'll try to use warmer variations of the color in the light, and cooler in the shadows. Here you can see I used cad red light for the side of the aanar in the light, and alizarin crimson for the cool side. The side of the lemon in the light gets cad yellow light, while its shadowy area is more of a raw umber with cool yellow, or green. I think I also warmed that shadow a bit with burnt sienna in some areas too. Because my light is so warm my shadows will be cooler, with cool north light the opposite would be true. But I still like to really warm up my darks. 

Anyway, after that, I do

Step 7: Right Brained Magic Time

The next thing I do is pretty much playing with color and value. "Is this the right value? If I squint does it look right? Is the color intense enough? if it's intense enough, is it the right value? Did I mess up that shape??" 

As you can see I've only really started on the left aanar. I'm trying to build up values, and add more paint to the lights here. And that's pretty much what I did with the other fruit. Add more paint to the lights. I'm afraid I didn't take a picture before I added the highlights...

Finally at the very end:

Step 8: The darkest darks, The lightest lights

Here is where I add the final things: The darkest bits of the painting and the high lights. I really think the highlights make or break a painting. You can get away with a lot with a lot of paint and some well placed highlights!

And then after that... well, I usually wait until the next morning to get a good photograph of it in natural light. And fix anything that's still bugging me the next day. I always need that extra time to really go back and look with fresh eyes.

I can already see the shape of that lemon and that right aanar can use more of that light pink color, though it is darker than the other one. I'll see if there is something I can do to it. 

Tomorrow!

I hope my little step by step process helps, at least for the beginning stages. I know I didn't talk about color mixing or details or anything important! But I hope this allows you to tackle some blank canvas of your own!

Museums: I suppose I've been doing it wrong then!

I suppose if looking at the art in museums gets security all over you, I should be doing this:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/10/warning-not-safe-for-work-unless-you.html

In case you're wondering about it being safe for work or not, there is one picture of his wife naked from the back, fairly small, all the way down at the bottom of the blog post.

I've been using museums incorrectly my whole life!



(This blog post is meant for humor. And because I like Neil Gaiman.)

Fiverr: Doggy

Quick painting and post! I'll explain my absence soon. Pretty much just busy, tired, and painting!

I've been doing a lot for Artumn Madness!!! Any one else joining me for October?