Showing posts with label thumbnail sketches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thumbnail sketches. Show all posts

Friday, March 7, 2014

Walker Lane: A Landscape Study



My in-laws live in rural Missouri.  Their home is located outside of a small town not too far from the Mississipi River about 1.5 h south of St. Louis.  We typically go out for Thanksgiving, but every once in a while we make it out at other times of year.  They got to name their gravel lane when 911 became available (Walker Lane, thank you), and the property is flanked by fields. The first time I visited, long ago, was the first time I'd  ever heard cows low at night, which is a scary sound for a suburban girl.  The lane is lined with old orchards, old and young trees, and lately, marching towards the family property--town.  

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

View From Sanctuary

Last Sunday, instead of listening in church, I was studying the view out the window.  Our church lucked into some life long dedicated gardeners, and on the grounds you can see all sorts of bits and pieces of their handiwork.  The sanctuary windows look out on to some of their plantings, and the turning leaves against the dark backdrop caught my eye.  
A couple of weeks ago, I thought I should start carrying a sketch book around with me.  I ordered a 6x6 inch one that fits in my purse with the idea that I'd draw every day.  (I haven't quite managed that, but I am drawing.)  I whipped out the sketchbook, and.....didn't have a single thing to draw with.  I ended up scrounging a green pencil, and did a quick study with notes about colors--see below.

When I sat down to paint, I purposefully limited my palette to Prussian Blue (two o'clock), Alizarin Crimson (ten o'clock), and Quinacridone Gold (six o'clock) and looked at various values and ways that the paints mixed before I started--again, see below.  In the past, I haven't planned things quite so much.  I'm not sure if I like this or not.

 The final result took two tries.  I tried the first painting on 140-lb paper, and I was having trouble with the paint drying too fast.  I tried again on 300-lb paper, and liked the result much better.  The painting is alla prima, and is 4x7 inches.  Definitely makes me think of fall.
 
From the sketch book.

Planned palette.  That's Prussian Blue at two o'clock, Quinacridone Gold at six, and Alizarin Crimson at ten.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The Mill Course at Sunset

My younger son is taking golf lessons at The Mill Course in Winton Woods, which is part of the Hamilton County Park System.  It's very difficult to predict when he'll finish a round of golf, so when I pick up, I frequently have to wait.  Luckily, they have a beautiful patio that overlooks the course.  And, of course, I end up studying the trees and the light.

One of the things I've learned, is that my phone takes terrible pictures.  That turns out to be okay though, since at best, I use the photos as jumping off points for paintings.  So, to the left is a pic I snapped one evening while waiting for golfers.

Then, a week or two went by, and all I remember is that the line of trees looked lit up against the darker tree line, and that there was a golf flag.  I planned my painting around the idea of trees versus dash of red flag, and did a couple of thumbnail sketches to see what I though about different value plans.  The sketches are only about 1.5x1.5 inches.  You can see them to the right.

I like the bottom value sketch better, but ended up loosing the top light portion when I did the painting.  It's interesting--I'm not a big fan of golf, but this course is beautiful.  It's hard not to feel at peace as the light comes by.   You can see the final product at the top. 






Monday, September 30, 2013

Starting With Value, Or More Pears

This fall, I'm taking a color workshop from Barb Smucker.  It's a lot of fun, and very useful.  Barb is an excellent teacher, and the class has such varied participants that it's hard not to learn and get excited about art.  I'm going to try and restate some of the things we're learning, to help give me the language to talk about art.  Bear with me!

We started by talking about value, which reprents the light to dark range in art. Many, many artists recommend doing a value study when planning a painting.  This is a monochromatic small study to lay out where the lights and darks will be.  By extension, this leads into "notan," which is a Japanese design principle that applies to how the lights and darks are massed, or the composition.  If I understand this correctly, and I may not--you can do a value study without notan.  When you have reached a well-designed composition in your value study, then you have notan.  Here's a description from Mitchell Albala on notan and another example from Diana Mize for Empty Easel.

By extension, you can use an color for a notan study, and once you've laid out the lightest and darkest values, you can start to add in mid-tone values.  For watercolor, for the darkest value, I'll use a lot of paint and minimal water.  For light, I'll preserve the white of the paper.  And for a mid-tone in a monochromatic painting, I'll use more water with my paint.   Here are some thumbnail sketches for value studies for a still life using raw umber with three values--dark, light, and middle tone.  This study has three different interpretations--a mid/dark center of interest against light.  A light/mid center of interest against dark, and finally a dark/light against mid.  You can see, that how I choose to lay out the painting affects the mood and energy of the painting.

Then I need to extrapolate to color.  This is where it gets tricky.  I think I'll save another post for talking about the next step.  In the meantime, though, here are two of my paintings that I tried to translate from the value study (which, hopefully has some notan).  Both are limited palattes with prussian blue and indian yellow.  The high key light background painting at the top of the page includes quinacridone orange  (at this point, we'd eaten some of the pears, and we were down to one!).  The dark background (below) painting includes quinacridone gold and raw umber.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

A Failed Painting....Try and Try Again

I was driving my boys home from a lacrosse match south of Dayton when we happened upon a tree lined field.  It was late in the afternoon, and the trees were casting long shadows that looked like fingers.  I love landscapes like this.  I stopped and gawped.  My boys wondered what the hold up was.  I tried later to do a thumbnail sketch to lay out the composition, like so:

The tree shadows were an grayed down ultramarine blue, and the trees and sky were about the same value in blues, greens and golds.  Since it was early spring, you could clearly see the tree branches, and the field tended toward a brown and gold.

I did not take a picture.   A thumbnail sketch and my memory is all I've got to work from for composition.   For more on thumbnail sketches, you can read here.
The painting did not come out at all like I planned....I need to go back and try again and adjust the colors and shapes.  Try and try again.

You'll notice, I've been repeating paintings--frequently it's for scale.  I'll experiment small and then scale up if I like the small work, or the study.  Or, it could be to fix issues like shape and color.  When I'm working from my imagination it can be hard to strike the right balance the first time out.  You can see that when you compare the paintings here and here.

Hopefully, next week, I'll be able to show you an improved version of the same landscape.