Green Men and White Paint

Welcome to the growing number of my art class who are beginning to read this blog. Julie, my art teacher, has also started reading this blog. She comments "I'm glad I wasn't mentioned by name!" (Oops). I think I heard her scream this evening. Another student, looking at my painting said "Oh, he's turned green!" That was when I heard the scream - but I wasn't paying careful attention, so I might be wrong.

Admittedly, the moustache had been painted too dark, but the 5 o'clock shadow definitely looked green to me.

I have learned 2 things in recent weeks. Number one thing I have learned: when I apply paint to canvas I generally mix a colour very much too dark, this is something that I must correct, unfortunately it really only becomes obvious to me when Julie looks at my effort and goes a little quiet.

Or screams.

Number two thing I have learned: accidentally dark colours can be very easily lightened with white paint. Julie can fix anything with white paint, and I am rapidly learning this skill also. I don't think Julie wants me to learn this skill, but she taught me in the first place, so there can't be too much of an issue.

Have a look how much white paint was used in the sequence of paintings below.












Julie really is a very patient art teacher.

Horsemen

I am painting "The Horsemen" at home while painting "The Couple" at art class (see my first post). Painting at home is a completely different experience from painting at class. First; at class I am very happy for my art teacher to take over my brush and make any number of corrections to my work. I learn a lot from watching her puzzle over and then solve the problem that I was trying to deal with. I do not have this help at home and must press on even if I am not entirely happy with how I have dealt with the painting session. Second; there are only two hours of class each week, whereas at home I can manage anywhere up to about 4 hours each session if I plan things well.

For this painting I started by accurately drawing the main shapes, using a lined grid to transfer the picture from a photograph onto the canvas. I then tried to visualise the underlying single colour of the main shapes. By this (I think) I mean, browns and greys are made of mixtures of the three primary colours, but which of the primary colours lends most impact to that grey. I painted that visualised colour onto the canvas, with a transparent colour, varying the value by diluting with medium, or by my choice of pigment. So, referring to the second picture, the floor is not bright green, and the horse and the bricks are not yellow.

Two books come to mind as I try to explain what I wish to achieve. The first is "Capturing Radiant Light & Color in Oils and Soft Pastels" by Susan Sarback; and the second is "Making Color Sing" by Jeanne Dobie. I like both of these books very much and if I spent the same amount of time painting as I did reading these books I would quite possibly already have finished this painting. Sarback's book offers an approach to "full color seeing" and teaches artists how to see the colours of what they are painting rather than relying various colour formulas. The colours of her pictures are vibrant, even in stormy weather. I hope that, when finished, people will look at my painting and remark on the vitality of the colours, and yet I hope the colours will seem very realistic and not at odds with everyday perception.

Dobie's book is a watercolor book, and she teaches less how to see colours and more techniques to put down luminous colour. She talks about making colourful grays and I love the way she uses these mousy colours to set off jewels of more pure colours.

I will be experimenting in this painting with laying down transparent washes of oil colour to achieve effects like Dobie describes. Maybe I am biting off more than I can chew, already I am struggling - the dark green floor in picture 3 should have been dark yellow with a cast of green. I have so much to learn.

Have you had any experience with using washes of oils to create vibrant colours? I would love to hear your ideas about how to approach this picture.

1998

This was the first picture I drew, way back in 1998, having made the decision to try my hand at art. I was not happy. I was not happy at all. I was absolutely not happy at all. I walked out of the house and down to a local bookshop and was very fortunate enough to find the excellent book by Douglas R Graves entitled "Drawing a Likeness."

The reason this book caught my attention was the way it broke down the procedure necessary to draw a likeness into 45 steps, each step with an illustration. This seemed as close as was possible to having an art teacher standing beside me. The two pictures below are the second and third pictures that I drew - they are copies of one of the exercises in the Graves book, and I think they show how successful this book was at teaching me some of the techniques of drawing.

Interestingly, the key factor which improved my drawing was a short comment by the author underneath one of his gallery pictures - on page 26 - "This is a quick 45 minute sketch..." Until then I had expected a drawing to take maybe 15 minutes. When I learned that patience was one of the keys of drawing, my results improved enormously.

Finally happy with the results of my lessons I drew this next picture, a copy of an old family photo. It took an entire sunny afternoon to draw, lying on the bed where the sun was streaming in through the window.

It is amazing how one can improve over just a few days!

Over the next years I have bought 2 further books by Douglas R. Graves, "Figure Painting in Oil", and "Life Drawing in Charcoal," both excellent. In fact so far I have assembled a collection of 76 books. Many of them are good, not all of them are great, and that first purchase, "Drawing a Likeness" ranks as one of my most favourite.

First Post

I decided perhaps 9 years ago to rekindle an old childhood interest of mine - art - and began to try my hand at drawing (at which I was moderately successful) and painting (at which I made no progress at all). I needed some formal tuition and there was very little available in the city where I live.

Just last year however I stumbled across someone who was teaching a small group of people how to paint, and I quickly jumped at the opportunity of joining this group. So my first formal painting lessons started about one year ago. I was surprised at first by how many people in the class seem eager to sell their paintings, and the emphasis placed on creating 'saleable' paintings. For me, my pleasure is in painting, and in learning to paint. It is a test of myself - can I create a picture that I am pleased with. Perhaps in time my ideas on this will change, but for the moment I am trying to create paintings that have meaning to me, to my family and to my friends.

A case in point: "The Couple" - the painting to the left. To me the subject of this painting is important to me, and I am not concerned whether it is saleable or not. My task for now is to paint it and learn in doing so.

This is how I have started my first oil painting. I tried to draw an accurate value painting in charcoal before I started painting. I thought perhaps it would help me to mix the colours better if I could see the target value on the canvas. The teacher explained that having so much charcoal on the canvas was a big mistake - she was right - the charcoal dissolved in the oil as I put it on the canvas and moved and blended together as I brushed the colour on. I am pressing on regardless.