Leaves in the Sun, 12 x 16 Oil on linenAnother olive grove study. On this one, I have a higher key and chroma for the violets and blues in the shadows. Because the picture is dominated by muted colors - leaves, trunks and dirt - I thought I could use some keyed up color notes. My work is generally pretty tonal and I don't get crazy with bright colors, but this subject matter calls for an extra pinch of something, especially because it's going to end up 4 x 7 feet.
Still, I prefer to rely on tonal contrasts rather than hue/saturation. In order to make more saturated colors work in the shadows, I'd have to key it up quite a bit, and too much of that will result in a picture that is colorful, but gutless and contrived. The mood I'm after will be much better represented by restrained color notes though it is a balancing act, I'm sure.
In doing these studies, I'm looking for that balance, the tipping point where more saturated colors help but not interfere with the mood created by the more restrained and tonal notes.
This nitty gritty technical stuff I love to read in other artists' writings, but I don't necessarily like talking about it. Not that I have any secrets about technique and such - after all, I'm not doing anything which history hasn't already given us - but I'd imagine it gets tedious to read. Art ought not be so tedious. It ought to be resonant without getting into the boring technicalities. But ya know, sometimes you have to take a hard look at the sentence structures in order to arrive at the compelling story. Thinking about in technical terms helps me, anyway, to organize and clarify in my mind what's important in this picture and how I might achieve it. And that's all I'm doing.
I'm liking the increasingly flippity brushstrokes, though. It occurs to me, I need some round brushes for this!
Still, I prefer to rely on tonal contrasts rather than hue/saturation. In order to make more saturated colors work in the shadows, I'd have to key it up quite a bit, and too much of that will result in a picture that is colorful, but gutless and contrived. The mood I'm after will be much better represented by restrained color notes though it is a balancing act, I'm sure.
In doing these studies, I'm looking for that balance, the tipping point where more saturated colors help but not interfere with the mood created by the more restrained and tonal notes.
This nitty gritty technical stuff I love to read in other artists' writings, but I don't necessarily like talking about it. Not that I have any secrets about technique and such - after all, I'm not doing anything which history hasn't already given us - but I'd imagine it gets tedious to read. Art ought not be so tedious. It ought to be resonant without getting into the boring technicalities. But ya know, sometimes you have to take a hard look at the sentence structures in order to arrive at the compelling story. Thinking about in technical terms helps me, anyway, to organize and clarify in my mind what's important in this picture and how I might achieve it. And that's all I'm doing.
I'm liking the increasingly flippity brushstrokes, though. It occurs to me, I need some round brushes for this!
4 comments:
4x7 feet is going to be great. What size brushes do you think your going to try?
Well I dunno. I guess my no.1's are out, though. My 8's will be the detail brushes. May be I'll take a page out of your playbook and get some 4"rollers?
Just enough leaf detail in the front to make it work!
I do not find the "nitty-gritty" tedious at all.... as a matter of fact, I'm reading all your past posts to soak up as much info as I can. You really have a gift for explaining things in an understandable way.
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