Portrait

Joe, 16 x 20 inches, oil on linen

I painted this a couple of days ago. The model didn't show up to our figure session, so one of the artists, Joe, volunteered to sit for us. (Thanks Joe!)

I'm not a portrait painter. I like painting figures and heads, but I don't like painting portraits too much. You see, I'm not what you call a people person. I'm not socially dysfunctional or anything (at least, I don't think I am...) but carrying on a conversation with strangers isn't my idea of a good time. Unless we're talking about art - then I find it very easy.

Not that I typically carry on a conversation with the model while I'm painting, but you kinda do, don't you, albeit without words. Portrait painting is, in my experience, extraordinarily intimate and intense, and I just become uncomfortable because there is so much unspoken communication between the model and myself.

It's absolutely impossible to paint a portrait and only think of the model as a physical object there just to be painted. You can't ignore the persona, the psychological and emotional complexities of the individual because it's all there. The model often puts forth all this intimate energy as if to say, "what are you going to do with it?" To paint a portrait, is to have an intimate relationship with the model. There's no way around it.

I don't want that. I don't want to have that kind of emotional connection with a model. It's too much. Painting friends and loved ones that you understand is one thing. Being forced to have an intense relationship with someone you don't know that well is quite a different story, one which I can do without.

If the model is looking another direction, I can paint him/her without getting into this psychological muck and I actually enjoy it very much. After all what is more challenging and beautiful than the human form?

I was compelled to do a more portrait-y treatment of Joe on Friday, because I thought he looked a lot like Harry Carmean, who is a master figure draughtsman in every sense of the word, and who taught me how to draw the figure over twenty years ago. In a sense, I was painting memories of Carmean, using Joe's head as a reference. I could just hear him over my shoulder; "Don't do that. Lesser artists do that."


[Edit] By my quoting Carmean, I didn't mean that "lesser artists" do portraiture, or that portraiture is a lesser form of art. On the contrary, it not only requires mastery of the medium, but also a capacity to embrace, understand, interpret and express infinite varieties of the human condition. No small task. Carmean often said "Lesser artists do that" about what the student was doing with line work, or shading, or some other basic technical thing. Basically telling us we sucked.

When Your Confidence Is Shaken

Back, 16 x 20, oil on linen

Call it a rut. A slump. We've all been there, over and over again. Nothing seems to work and you feel like you just forgot how to paint altogether. How do you get out of it, and get back on track? Seek inspiration by looking at other artists work, watching movies, listening to music, taking a long walk... we have many different methods of getting unstuck.

When I get stuck, often it's because I'm over-thinking what I'm supposed to be doing: technically, stylistically, psychologically, career-wise. Too much junk to work into a single painting, and I forget about what's important at that moment; the painting itself. When I recognize it, I just stop what I'm doing, and go back to my comfort zone, something I've done before successfully and with full control. Something I understand how to do. No, not for the purpose of rehashing something I can easily sell, but to find myself in a place where I feel back in control.

In figure painting, that means simple palette systems and a clear figure-ground composition, nothing tricky or overly ambitious. I just want to get my chops going again without worrying about style, or complex color combinations, or whether this fits in with the rest of my oeuvre. I think of them as going back to simple exercises, and these Zorn palette things are just the right ticket for me. Only three colors plus white, I can just focus on one thing at a time and soon (hopefully), I'm back in the zone. Or not. Some ruts are deeper than others, but eventually we get unstuck. It's just easier on the psyche to have a comfort zone at these times, somewhere you can go back to, to find yourself in control.

All these are done in the Zorn Palette. Not because I'm in a rut, but because I assigned it to my class as homework. After seeing everyone's efforts, I think it was clear that this was a good place to return to, should we get lost with more complex palettes and are left feeling like we don't know what the hell we're doing. Simplify the problem, as I always say, and you simplify the solution.

Ruts are a normal part of our artistic growth and as painful as they are, we can be sure that they're temporary. Don't despair, and go back to what you know. When you feel back in control, the path will present itself.

Delta Skies

Big Sky Over Delta, 12 x 16 inches, oil on linen

I've been working on more tonal landscapes lately for several upcoming shows. I'll announce them after the galleries do, to make sure the details are in sync.

Winter can get dreary, and the glorious weather we've been having this week is a welcome change. The daffodils are already blooming, and so is my plum tree in my yard. Allergy season is upon us! It gives me a miserable time each year, but hey, I'm ready for painting weather already.

One thing about winter around here, though. Increased precipitation means increased humidity, and on occasions when the sun does peak through, we get absolutely spectacular cloudscapes. On the delta, where it's flat and tall trees are few, the sky is big and takes center stage. The simplified landscape of the wetlands provides a great context and anchor for the big sky paintings. The emphasis is on the mood. If I can express just a little bit of the evocative quality of this place on a sunny winter evening, it's very, very satisfying to me.

Delta Winter, 11.5 x 17 inches, oil on linen

I like the quiet, moody, dusky sunsets as opposed to the flaming orange fireworks exhibition. I can't paint the spectacular. When I try, it always comes out looking like a cheap knockoff of something glorious. Then again, the views that make me go "ooh aahh" only do so because it's so extraordinary. If I saw it every day, it may not be so wow-inspiring. On the other hand, the quiet views of a more ordinary nature sometimes evoke memories of long ago, and has the power to trigger all kinds of emotions associated with these memories.

It might just be the way a weak sunlight hits the distant clouds, or the violet tinge along the low horizon. Or just the way the leaves on the eucalyptus are swaying in an almost imperceptible breeze, or how the sky seems brighter right after the sun dips below the hills. Whatever it is, it recalls an earlier time in my life, and that to me is more worthy of further investigation than a visual spectacle. The psychology of it all, nostalgia, buried emotions... it's all there. And when I'm painting these kinds of views, I tend to dig deep within in search of something at the core of my identity. I can't articulate it or put my finger on it, but it's there. I can feel it.

Delta moods, 6.5 x 12 inches, oil on linen

The wetlands is not a part of my childhood. But the humid sky is. And the atmospheric grays are. Actually, come to think of it I did spend my childhood surrounded by wetlands. Only mine were vast rice paddies. Very flat and in the growing season, very wet. I wonder if that has any baring on my being drawn to the delta landscapes? May be. In any case, I never grow tired of painting these kinds of landscapes.

Paintmap

I have just uploaded a bunch of my plein air sketches to Paintmap.com, a geolocation based database website which is sort of like Panoramio for painters. It shows a google map of the world, and you can zoom into pinpoint where artists have painted.

I've wanted to compile a database of good painting spots for a while now, and this seems like a pretty nifty way to do it. For each location, I've included a short description of the spot, like whether parking is free or even available, public restrooms nearby, etc. (which is important if you're leading a group for a workshop or something)

I hope to keep uploading plein air sketches to Paintmap, and who knows, I may end up with a pretty good list of locations. If you'd like to try painting at the same spots, check it out~ You can easily find my views and try your hand at them.

It would be interesting to see some of your interpretations of the same spot I painted!

More Limited Palette

Sometimes, when people talk about a "limited palette", they mean that the colors are muted. You know, subdued colors. they may have all been mixed from a sixteen-color palette, but it's still (sometimes) referred to as limited palette.

Other times, limited palette means you only have a few tube colors on the palette. A primaries palette would be a limited palette. But you could have all kinds of high chroma notes in a painting done with the primaries, right?

My definition is the latter, at least for this, and the previous post.

Now we got that cleared up, what colors did I use for this painting? White, Permanent Red, Yellow Ochre, and Ivory Black. Yes, it's another Zorn Palette painting. I did it this morning, live model, three hours. It started out well, and somewhere in the middle of the session I got in trouble.

My idea was to have a spot light on her thigh area and gradually lessen the strength of the light as we travel up the torso and throw the head completely in shadow - I wanted a mysterious feel, sort of like when they interview people on camera but hide their identities? The light on the model's head was weaker than on her lower body, but it was still well lit. So I was basically making up an alternate lighting to illustrate my idea, but I couldn't make it work convincingly enough so I scraped and wiped the made up parts.

With an hour left, I repainted the top, more or less as she was lit. I de-emphasized the contrast but it's still kinda awkward and clumsy. Perhaps I will work on it some more and see if I can make a painting out of it.

Nonetheless, I had a great time painting from a live model; Something I used to do regularly but left it behind a couple of years ago when I gave up my studio. Now that I'm teaching again, it's once again a part of my exercise routine, and I really enjoy it, and I'm having a good time painting in this, and other limited palette set ups.

Frank Ordaz also talks about the Zorn Palette in his latest post. Check out what he did with it; A great example of how it's used to depict darker skin tones. Very different from my examples, but you can see how very versatile this palette is.

I leave you with a pic of something that has nothing to do with art - We found these guys in the parking lot after our beer session.

Limited Palette

So last week, I showed a limited palette self portrait done in Ultramarine Blue, Transparent Oxide Red, and White. We add a yellow to the mix, and now we have a primaries palette.

The yellow I added was yellow ochre, a decidedly low chroma color. But really, there's nothing high chroma about skin tones, is there. Sure, you can choose to paint high key or high chroma, but if that's not your aim, a very limited palette like this will not only do the trick, but is extremely helpful in keeping your colors harmonized. Because you pretty much have to mix all the tube colors in every mix, harmony is almost guaranteed. Isn't that nifty?

A set up like this helps you stay in control. and if you are careful to juxtapose close but varied notes, you really can get a lot of richness out of it. If you're having trouble with keeping color harmonies in check, this is a good place to be. You can always add brighter colors into the mix, perhaps a little bit at a time, and go as bright and saturated as you want. But having a place to return to is a good feeling. It's like a safe house. haha~



Here's another sketch, same palette. Plus I used a tiny bit of cad red in just one note on the ear. I don't know what that dark note is doing there next to my red note. Huh. *shrug* Anyway, you can see that different types of skintones can be mixed from the same four tubes of color, and only one of them (blue) is saturated, at that.




Now this one is painted with another set of primaries. Still using only three colors plus white, but they are; Permanent Red, Yellow Ochre, and Ivory Black. It's the famous Zorn palette basically, although I think Mr. Zorn used Vermilion for his red.

Where as the previous limited palette had Blue as the one saturated tube color, this one has a Red bias. The Yellow Ochre is a lower chroma yellow, and the black is nearly a no-chroma blue. Theoretically, it is a contextual blue because if you think of the black (and all the grays that can be mixed with black and white) as being in the center of the color circle because it has no discernable hue, it becomes blue only when the yellow and the red are introduced. Otherwise it's just grey, neither warm nor cool. In reality, Ivory Black mixed with titanium white already looks a little blue. Still, compared to the red and yellow, it's extremely de-saturated.

So what this is, is a primary palette that's very well suited to painting warm reds and oranges - skin tones. Again, it's very difficult to get out of control in terms of color harmony. Black might prove to be a little tricky at first, but as long as you treat it like a blue, it should cooperate with you happily.

You've had instructors say don't use black? That it's evil and will kill your colors? I say, good enough for Sargent and Zorn, good enough for me. Or as Ken Auster says, if it's so bad, why do they make it?

Drawing Workshop March 20 - 21

I will be teaching a two day figure drawing workshop next month right here in Fair Oaks. March 20 - 21 (Sat - Sun).

I can't say enough about the importance of drawing. But don't take my word for it, if you'd rather believe the words of a more qualified artists like... oh... say, Michelangelo, or Tiepolo, or Tintoretto.. Velasquez, Sargent, Sorolla, Degas...

Figure drawing is easy to get into; all you need is a piece of paper and a pencil. But like anything else worthy of greatness, it's incredibly difficult to master, especially if you're just going through the motions blindly and mindlessly. Drawing takes active seeing, analyzing, and interpreting, all of which takes focus and knowledge; knowledge of anatomy, techniques in expressing gesture, rhythm, flow, and volume.




The way I like to draw the figure is to focus first on the gesture, second on form, and third on line quality. Notice I didn't mention proportions, which may be at the top of the list for some artists. I agree that getting the proportions right is important. Precision is crucial in certain kinds of drawing, like portraiture, for example. If I were drawing or painting a portrait, I'd spend a lot of time in the beginning stages to ensure accuracy.

But for me personally, though, I think it is far more important - and fascinating, to draw the figure with the intent to communicate what it is doing, and not necessarily what it looks like on the surface. So I prefer to stress the gesture above everything else. That means shorter poses usually, no more than 20 minutes. And it means economy of line; how best to get maximum information in a short period of time. The way I think about economy of line in drawing is exactly the same as the way I try to get economy in my brushwork on a painting.

But what about proportions!? With these shorter gesture drawings, it's essential to see and take in the entire figure. In order to get the gesture right, you have to make every part fit into the whole. Context, once again. With practice we learn to see each line as it relates to the whole, rather than to another part.



What I'm trying to say, in my long winded way, is that proportions will come with practice, if you get into the habit of seeing the whole figure, and not just comparing one part to another. So I don't fuss over my students' drawings regarding proportions. I actually discourage measuring. (Unless we're talking about portraiture) I want my students to learn to draw what the figure is doing, and not get caught up in trying to render a visual likeness. If a student wants to learn how to get a realistic rendition of a subject, I can certainly help but his money would be better spent studying with masters of such discipline.

If you do find my approach interesting and would like to learn more – and you want to come to my March workshop, you can still sign up by contacting The School of Light and Color directly.

Happy Drawing~

A Few Tips on Photographing Artwork

In his comment a few posts ago, Tom asked how I photograph my work. I thought I'd offer a few tips I've learned over the years, because I really don't feel like painting tonight :-)

But before I get into it, I want to make it clear that I'm not a professional photographer, and I don't have professional lighting set up in my studio or anything like that. I'm just trying to get accurate color with what I got, and minimize glare as best I can.

My studio lighting isn't perfect, but it's adequate. I have eight 6500K fluorescent tubes, and track lighting with six halogen bulbs. None of the halogen bulbs are pointed directly at the canvas, because they have too much color. (Even the "color corrected bulbs") They're pointed at walls and ceilings to add warmth to the otherwise very cool fluorescent ambient lighting, thus balancing the temperature.

And in this light I paint, and shoot my smaller works. I don't shoot the big canvases in this light because it's not even enough. The big ones are shot outside in open shade or under an overcast sky. Overcast is preferable because the light is more neutral than open shade on a sunny day, where the light source is the blue sky; the light tends to be pretty blue. But here in California, we don't always have overcast skies so I just have to make do.

A good digital camera is a good start. Preferably one that has a white balance setting, where you can adjust the color temperature according to the type of lighting you have; fluorescent, tungsten, open shade, overcast, sunlight, etc. Whether I'm shooting my paintings inside or out, I try a bunch of different white balance settings to find which one comes closest to accurate color. I often move my painting around, trying different spots around the house, inside and out. Hey it's digital so it's not like you're wasting film. I just delete the dozen shots that I don't want.

So White Balance Setting is one convenient tool. But that doesn't address the glare on the surface of the canvas. If you are using a digital SLR, a good investment is a polarizing filter. This filter can cut down the glare considerably. It doesn't have to cost a whole lot, either. Mine is a Hoya and I paid twenty something dollars. Totally worth it.

If you're not using a SLR, there's still the biggest trick in the bag; shoot your painting at an angle so that you minimize glare, and use the perspective crop tool in Photoshop to straighten it out. This is probably the most effective way to eliminate glare, short of professional copy photo set up. But make sure the angle is no more than absolutely necessary, because you are essentially creating uneven distances between your camera and the painting, and that means uneven focus. Not good. You can remedy this a little bit by standing back a ways and using a zoom lens, and a small aperture, but if you're adept at adjusting the aperture on your camera, you probably don't need tips from an amateur like me.

So that's how I deal with glare. Now, color accuracy is quite another matter. The aforementioned color balance setting is a great tool, but it's not perfect. Sometimes you get very accurate colors, other times, you can only get so close. Often I need to rely on Photoshop to do my color correction. But the fact is, the more accurate an image you start out with, the easier it is to achieve the end result. So if there's anything you can do to get a good starting image, that's a huge plus.

You probably know that when pros do it, they use a color strip to ensure all the colors come out accurately. You can do the same by painting a strip of cardboard with different colors (just use tube colors you already have on the palette, plus white and black), and make sure it's visible in your viewfinder. Your digital image now has the color range information. Take this image into Photoshop and before you perspective-crop it out, try auto-adjusting levels, color and contrast. ( Image->Adjustments->Auto Levels, etc.) Usually, this puts the image in the right direction, but more often than not it's too much. So I first copy the original layer, then apply the adjustment on the top layer, then adjust the transparency of the top layer so that the adjustment isn't so drastic. After you're satisfied, flatten the layers back into one.

Only after this adjustment do I perform the perspective-crop. See for yourself what Auto Levels does with and without the color strip in the picture. The difference can be pretty significant.

If the image is still not there, the next thing I try is to fiddle with color balance. (Image->Adjustments->Color Balance). I don't usually have problems with my photos coming out with colors too saturated, but if I do, use the hue/saturation control. (Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation). If that still doesn't give you reasonably accurate color, it's time to go back and reshoot your painting under different (hopefully better) lighting conditions and try again.

There are tons of other tools in Photoshop, and an advanced user can manipulate curves and such to get the accurate colors, but for most color corrections, having a color strip, adjusting levels, color balance, and hue/saturation, together with perspective crop, will do the trick.

Lastly, I can't stress enough the importance of NOT doctoring up your digital image to make it look BETTER than your painting. Don't do that. You're only cheating yourself. Color correction should be used to make the image as accurate as possible, not to fake out judges to enter competitions, make a sale online, or to gain gallery representation. That's just outright fraud and it ain't Kosher, to say the least.

If I think of other photo tips, I will mention it in a future post.

Commission's Done~

Waiting And Waiting, 36 x 48 inches, oil on linen

This is a commissioned painting, just completed and approved. It's a fairly large painting (36 x 48) so it took a while to do. It's more than just having to cover a large area. To paint things believably, I have to actually pay attention to how those things are constructed. On a small painting, little details like flyers in the windows may just be abstract dabs of paint, not even looking like rectangles. At this scale, the same dabs have to become not only rectangles, but rectangles in perspective. But if I painted them precisely and accurately, the painting will become too tight and realistic, losing something intangible along the way. It's a really tricky balancing act which I find both challenging, and when I can pull it off, rewarding.

This painting does look pretty tight on the computer screen at this tiny scale, but in person, it's not so tediously rendered. I tried to keep some life in each stroke, and I'm pretty happy with the result. The mood created by the weak sunlight and shadow is exactly how I imagined it.

After this photo was taken, the client requested a change, and I repainted the figure. Not a drastic change, just an adjustment in the attitude of the main character. The photo of the final version had some glares so I'm posting the earlier version.

You can see it much better if you click on the image.

Did anyone say Hopperesque? Yes, I was channelling the ghost of Ed when I conceived this picture. If anyone caught that the figure resembled Josephine, I'd be impressed. In the final version, she doesn't look like Jo. I thought it was kinda fun that it looked like her, but it's irrelevant after all.

Now I have to crate it and ship it off to... Philadelphia?

Today's Class

Ultramarine, Transparent Oxide Red, and White

I love my class! Such a great bunch, and they make it easy for me to teach, what with their positive energy and willingness to listen to what I have to say. You'd be surprised how often people pay to go to a class or a workshop, and not want to hear what the instructor is saying! Not my group. They are enthusiastic as well as diligent. Lucky me.

I've been having some very satisfactory results with my demos. I'm seeing that it is a lot more effective for me to jump in midway after everyone's been working for an hour or two, and either work on a student's painting – if he or she is happy to let me – or start a new canvas on a student's easel. More effective than my preparing a demo on a specific issue and trying to deliver it at the beginning of the class. I think the reason is that after an hour or two of painting, everyone's chops are greased and they're in painting mode. I can plainly see what issues need to be addressed, and if people are having trouble, they're ready to see the solution(s). And those who'd rather keep on working on their own painting can do so, and just listen to my rambling without stopping their work to watch me.

Today, the lighting was such that students on one side of the room had more or less a backlit view. So I did my demo on handling backlit situations, which can be tricky. I borrowed Debbie's set up and did a small painting to show how to deal with backlighting, picking a focal point in the what little lit area we had, and orchestrating colors and values around it to make it happen. Immediately following that, I offered an alternate solution, picking a different focal point in the shadow side, and restructuring the image (values, colors, edges, amount of detail, but not the drawing) to end up with a painting with an entirely different mood, but identical visual elements.

I didn't think about failing at my demo this time, because I wasn't working on anyone else's canvas but my own, and if I ruined it, it didn't matter. It was a fun demo from my perspective. It went over very well with the students too. "It's like magic, but when you explain it, it makes so much sense!" said one student. That made me happy~

The image I'm attaching is this week's homework; self portrait (again), this time using a cool dark color, a warm dark color, and white. Up to now we focused on values only. Now we have relative temperatures in the mix. The idea is to mix the two colors (plus white) to achieve temperature shifts, and get into thinking about color in relative terms.

I used Ultramarine, Transparent Oxide Red, and White. Isn't it amazing with just these colors you can get pretty convincing skin tones? It's like all the other colors on the palette are bonuses and extra spices, or something. OK not true, but it's still fascinating to me how much you can get across with so little.

Some Tonal Landscape Studies

I had typed up several paragraphs of my complaints about how I'm struggling (more than usual) with these tonalist studies lately, but then who wants to hear me whine? It's helpful for me to regurgitate my artist's block so that I can make sense out of it – it somehow allows me to see my thought process afresh when it's verbally expressed right there in front of my eyes– but I doubt that it would make sense to anyone else reading my rambling. (It is totally disorganized!)


So I just deleted all that crap, and decided instead to talk about what I do know and understand. And it is what I call atmospheric tonalism. The color structure is built around a single color, and it is used often when depicting moody, atmospheric landscapes. (or cityscapes. or anything else for that matter, but I only have landscape examples here)

The top painting is built around Yellow, obviously. The farther we go back in space, the yellower it gets. As we come closer, we gradually see a wider range of value, and colors. Still, if I were to plot all the colors used on a color circle, none of it would deviate far from the yellow I used in the background.

The second painting looks like it has more color variations, and it does. How do I explain it? It's built around a neutral gray. (I know, I know, no such thing as neutral gray. You know what I mean) All the colors are very close to the center of the color circle. The cleaner shades of yellow, pink, and violet all happen at a very high value. At this range, the middle gray is pretty darn close to white, so the colors remain clean (relatively) and close in proximity, even though they occupy complementary slices of the color circle pie.





Here's another Yellow painting. We see violets and greens and reds, but they're very closely related to one another. Check this out; I've used the eye dropper tool in Photoshop to isolate different colors on the painting. In this context, b looks violet, but really, it's only violet because it's in context.


Taken out of context, these swatches don't necessarily look like the corresponding colors in the painting. But they are!




Another yellow painting. The key is to think of everything as a variation of the dominant color. If you want to paint something green, mix the yellow at the value you want, and bend it slightly toward green. Red? same thing. mix the yellow, at the right value, and bend it slightly toward red.

In this kind of painting, you may or may not see hue shifts between light and shadow (of a common surface). I think it adds another level of sophistication if you have some hue shifts, but it really only happens in the foreground, and the hue shifts must be subtle enough that it doesn't interfere with the yellow (in this case) theme. Once you start introducing too much of the other colors (because you LOVE Monet) you destroy the fundamental structure of atmospheric tonalism.


Can we do it in other colors? Sure, here's a green painting. Same structure.We see reddish brown peeking through, but only in the foreground. Same with the more saturated notes of green. Notice the systematic decrease in value range as we move back in space. Everything becomes closer and closer to the background sky color.


This is another example of a painting centered around middle gray. No color is anywhere near the edge of the color circle. That is, there's nothing really saturated, nothing remotely near pure tube colors, even though I am using them to mix these muted colors. (Ultramarine, Cad Lemon, Permanent Red, Transparent Oxide Red, and White)




If we go even closer to the middle gray and deviate even less, we might have something like this. A foggy day on the delta feels damp and drab. What better way to depict such a view?

I have been asked by several people to do a workshop that focuses on this stuff. I'm thinking it might be a good idea for people who want to explore ways to introduce more atmosphere and mood into their work. What do you think?