THE SIX STAGES OF PAINTING

Transcription

1 THE SIX STAGES OF PAINTING How to Think Like An Impressionist Painter by Gainor Roberts 1 Composition 2 Construction 3 Tone 4 Reconstruction 5 Painting 6 Ending

2 1. COMPOSITION 1. With soft charcoal design your canvas, keeping in mind the scale of the objects in relation to the edges of the canvas. Don t waste a lot of time making a finished drawing of your subjects. Loosely indicate the position of your objects or subject. The point is to get an idea of how the objects position themselves on the canvas and the scale of them in relationship to the size of the canvas. 2. The charcoal may be wiped out many times so you can try different arrangements. 3. Spend a lot of time on this step. You won t be able to fix mistakes easily later. 4. Try your canvas vertically and then horizontally. You don t have to include everything you see in your painting. It is alright to cut off objects at the edges of the canvas. If you are doing a portrait make sure there is enough space above the subject s head and don t cut off arms, legs, and fingers at the joints. Blank spaces in the background can be treated with value shifts to represent two walls coming together. 5. Use the rule of thirds; divide your canvas into a grid horizontally and vertically and use this for object placement. 6. When you have a composition you like go away from it for awhile and look at it with fresh eyes. If it excites you paint it, if not, start over. 1

3 2. CONSTRUCTION 1. Select a light color. I use yellow ochre, as it is easy to wipe out with a rag and turps. I often mix this with white to start. Gradually, as you find the correct lines you can go a little darker. 2. Don t outline objects. Yes, it s drawing, but I prefer to use the term construction thinking of it in terms of an armature on which you will hang the paint. Keep in mind that many painters can not draw well! Don t get hung up here. Look at the edges of objects. Most objects are made up of many planes and this will be seen at the edges. An apple is not a round circle. Try to see the planes in your initial construction. 3. Don t be fooled by what your mind says is the truth. Foreshortened objects are difficult to draw unless you follow carefully what you see and suspend what you know to be true. In other words, an arm that is coming directly at you must be drawn much shorter than it actually is. Look at negative spaces, the space between or around objects, to help you construct the lines. 4. Use any aids you wish, rulers, parallel rules, T-squares, or sighting sticks, to help with perspective and edges. 5. Indicate the edges of the shadows and highlights. Get in the habit of looking at shapes, within your objects; shadows and highlights create definite shapes and these may be constructed along with the cast shadow shapes 2

4 3. TONE 1. Here is where you establish the values in your painting. Values are gradations of tone or value from light to dark. 2. Every color has in infinite number of gradations on the scale most of them are imperceptible to the human eye. The establishment of tonal values will make the objects exist in space on a two dimensional canvas. Highlights and darks that are out of value pop out of a painting. Amateur portrait painters always misjudge the whites of the eyes and make them white when in fact they are usually a grey tone. You will find that as you paint, especially toward the end of a painting, every brush stroke must be correct, as it will go in and out of value very easily. Every time you work on a section of your painting, like the background, it will require making changes elsewhere. Your job, as the painter, is to keep the painting in value at all times. Adjusting one thing, then the next, until everything is balanced. 3. It s easy to be fooled by values. Look at your subject reversed in a hand held mirror, or turn your head upside down and always squint your eyes to see the tonal values of your subject and compare that to your painting. Scumble (scrub in the paint) with a dry brush, wiped of excess paint. Follow what you see, starting with the darks and leaving the highlights open canvas. Always work to the light of the canvas in this technique. Judge all the values in the foreground to the value of the background. 4. Some painters use a full range of values, from black to white, while others paint in a high key, with tonal ranges starting in a mid point on the scale. Whichever you do, it s your style and signature, but the values still have to be correct. 5. Squint, squint, squint. Ignore the crows feet at your eyes! Squinting through your lashes helps soften the scene so you see the lights and darks and are not fooled by what your mind says is the truth. 6. Grasp your brush in your hand, don t hold it pencil style. This will give you more control, and allows you to scumble faster. The idea is that you are making an underpainting, over which the paint will be applied. Two reasons for this, one is the aforementioned establishment of values, and the second is to knock down the white canvas, in the darks and middle tones creating a very lean underpainting. The fat over lean rule of oil paint has to do with layers of paint cracking over time. Oily layers in the early stages of the painting, with less oil in later layers, violates the fat over lean rule, and sometimes creates crackle on the surface of the painting. 3

5 4. RECONSTRUCTION 1. After the last stage of painting the edges of your objects disappear. The painting takes on a lovely quality, which can be kept and developed, as a tonalist painting, but this is Impressionism and you need structure to continue. 2. Reconstructing a painting is a good idea whenever you lose a line, or an area, or whenever you are unsure of where to go next. Delicately reconstructing the objects using a small filbert, or small synthetic or sable round brush, will reshape the objects, give strength to them, and allow you to restructure the armature you started with in the second stage. Once again this is construction not drawing. 3. The dark lines will disappear as you apply paint. Sometimes it is nice to see some of the dark lines left in a finished painting. If they are too strong at the end you can always paint them out. 4. At this stage you can still move things around. A misplaced apple may be redrawn in a different place, and a quick scumble of the old apple will remove it. It s tricky to do this, but with practice it s better to do this than start over before you need to. Sometimes a painting simply can t be salvaged. Don t waste time on it. Start again. Starting is where the learning is, not at the end. 5. Learn how to stretch canvases. Your old and unsalvageable work may be taken off the stretchers and consigned to the trash and you can use the stretchers again. It is better to do this than applying gesso to old canvases although in an emergency it s better than nothing. I hate working on gessoed canvas! Today we can buy canvases but they are inferior to canvas that you can make yourself, and you can play around with sizes rather than always painting in standard sizes. 4

6 5. PAINTING 1. Now the fun begins! Keep your strokes far apart, delicate, and do not attempt to blend the paint. Nothing makes mud faster. Even if the stroke is a wrong color or value don t mess with it. Fix it by adjusting the value or color on your palette and gently go over the first stroke. You can t do this too many times, so be careful. Later when the painting is dry you can fix many mistakes. 2. You start with the darks. Keep the highlights open for as long as you can, place paint all over the entire canvas. The background is just as important as the foreground. Do not use the background as a place to wipe your brush!! 3. Squint, looking at color and value. Don t worry about form, and line. The underpainting will help you determine the values that you have all ready established. Keep your mixtures of paint on the light side. As you go, there will be shifts in what you see, as you become more familiar with your subject. 4. At first the paint should be applied thinly, especially in the darks and shadows. Use Impasto (thick strokes) for highlights. An oil painting achieves a luminosity as layers are applied over dry paint. When you know enough you can work on a painting for several sessions, building up the colors each time. Many painters using oil paints have more than one painting going at a time, so each painting session will have a dry painting to work on. 5

7 6. ENDING 1. There is no end to the layers of paint you can put on a canvas. The determining factor in how to know a painting is finished is by your knowledge. It s done when you don t know what to do next. 2. Now you can draw, if you want. The stems of the apples, the curves of the indents may be drawn up as much or as little as you like. Be careful. The painterly quality of the open brush work is beautiful. Overworking a canvas can be disappointing. The highlights may be further developed, the lights and darks intensified, the appleness of the apples worked out. 3. A painting can be left in this stage, framed, and hung for all to enjoy. 4. Painting simple things is very instructive. It s better to paint from life, using photographs later when you know values and painting techniques. It s especially important to paint from your own photographs and not use magazine photos to make paintings. A direct knowledge of your subject is important. Use your own photographs and get familiar with how to enlarge them to the size of your canvas. Cell phones today take really good photographs, and a Nikon or Canon DSLR camera takes even better photographs. 5. The ending is your business..you will find your signature, your style, your vision as you work over many canvases. Pushing each canvas further than the last one you did will ensure that you continue to see, grow, and learn. 6

8 COLOR MIXING PRIMARY COLORS RED BLUE RED YELLOW BLUE YELLOW BLUE RED SECONDARY COLORS ORANGE GREEN VIOLET ORANGE GREEN VIOLET COMPLEMENTARY COLORS RED AND GREEN (think Christmas) YELLOW AND VIOLET (think Easter) BLUE AND ORANGE (think 4th of July) Make Gray by mixing two complementary colors then add white. This is called neutralizing your color 7

9 Utrecht Color Wheel $5.69 from Dick Blick. There are many others on the market that are available COLOR WHEELS AND COLOR VISION Do you need one of these? Well it is handy to have one hanging around. It isn t necessary to have one to be a good painter. I painted for many years and didn t own one. Do you need to buy one? No there are many photos online of color wheels and the one I have printed out below can be found online and printed on your own computer for free! But if you have problems with memorizing you might want one of these because you have to know the primary colors and the secondary colors and the complementary colors, and if that is too much work a color wheel will show you what they are. A color wheel is handy when you want to design a painting using, for example, a complementary or triadic color scheme. I was taught to look at what I am painting and try to capture the flash of colors that are there. All things have all colors, but you will see only a few of them. Local color refers to the thing that we call red; the apple is red and many untrained people will search for red in their paint box and paint it red. But if you are an Impressionist you will also paint that apple with its complement, green, and probably many other colors as well, such as a touch of blue in the highlight and perhaps some purple in the cast shadow. Light as it bounces off something contains all six colors of the spectrum; some are reflected and some are absorbed. We set up our palettes like a piano keyboard so that we can not bother with the names on the tubes and see if we can mix the color on our palette, or on the canvas, what we see, rather than making an intellectual identification of what color to use. Sometimes I am asked what color to paint that tree, and I will say either I don t know or all of them, depending on the tree, the time of day, the bad photograph, or if I am inside or outside. I am not seeing out of your eyes, and therefore my vision will be vastly different from your vision, and that has to do with brains, retinas, rods and cones, and other anatomical things. But we don t paint with light, we paint with paint and paint has certain issues. Color mixing is like cooking, a little of this, a little of that, and voila, it is wonderful; no, wait a minute it needs more salt! Much color mixing the Impressionists did took place on the canvas working wet into wet or placing color in broken brush strokes of complementary colors. Rather than getting hung up with what color to paint it, look at it, and then try to see that on the keyboard before you. It is easier than you think, provided you laid out your palette in some kind of order that you can relate to. Google color wheel and you can find this in images It is instructive to paint your own color wheel as an exercise. I painted this one in acrylics 8 This is another color wheel that I painted showing the base color in the triangle and in the small circle its complement

10 MY PALETTES THIS IS MY WORKING PALETTE OF SOHO COLORS left to right: Naples Yellow, White, Cadmium Yellow Pale Hue, Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue, Red Orange, Cadmium Red Light Hue, Alizarin Crimson, Viridian, Sap Green, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt, Ultramarine, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Paynes THE PROS AND CONS Soho is a house brand of Jerry s Artarama and their oil paint was advertised as mixing true when they introduced it about 6 years ago, more or less. I have used it since they first advertised it, and it was fine and did mix as true some more expensive paints. I still love it, but sadly there are many cons to this brand of paint and the biggest one is that it is loaded with driers that make the paint unusable in a very short time, as it will only last one day, even in a palette box. Students have reported that putting the palette in the freezer or covering them with wax paper extends the time significantly. However there are cons to doing both of those tricks, and so I squeeze out less paint and scrape it frequently. Because of the high volume of driers some of the paint in the tube is very stiff making it hard to use, and others are runny. But, in Soho s defense I have had very expensive paint that does both of these annoyances. Because of the quick drying of the paint your painting is often dry to work on the next day, which has both advantages and disadvantages which is a topic for another time. Another con is that the tubes are sealed and have to be poked with a nail (or plastic thing that comes with the paint that is useless). The tubes are cheap and leak and the labels are paper and sometimes come off requiring a taping job. However, the set of 24 colors has been a standby in my classes, and in my own studio, for years and for 9 Perhaps this is overkill! The photograph shows my very large arm palette with a full assortment of colors that I might have used for a very large and complex painting with many subtle hues. I tend to use Rembrandt paint for work that I expect to sell for more money. Obviously most people who are reading this booklet will have no need for a palette this size, with these colors, but I added it for contrast with the basic simple palette on page 8. It seems that I am addicted to many things in this life, and one of them is color. You can see that this array of colors is laid out basically the same as others shown here, from light to dark (Naples Yellow was a new color for me when I took this photograph many years ago, and it has been added at the end of the chain, but years later I moved it to be next to white). The palette is laid out in the same order as others: yellow, orange,

11 MY PALETTES (continued) THIS IS MY WORKING PALETTE OF DICK BLICK STUDIO OILS see below for the colors Left to right: Titanium white, Primary Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Cadmium Orange Hue, Cadmium Red Light, Alizarin Crimson, Sap Green, Viridian, Cerulean Blue Hue, Cobalt Blue Hue, Ultramarine, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Paynes Gray the second row shows each color with white added to it. Note: The set of 24 colors is fine for most people but I had to add a few favorite colors that were available only as 38ml tubes; Cadmium Red Light Hue, Viridian, Cobalt Blue Hue, Paynes Gray. THE PROS AND CONS Blick (dickblick.com) is a national chain that has just opened a store on Westshore Blvd., Tampa, on August 1, Naturally we are very happy to have a national chain where we can feel the product (with their great choices and prices). Because of the mounting number of cons for the Soho paints I decided to try the Blick studio set ($29.99). So far all the Saturday painters at Carrollwood Cultural Center are happy with the quality of the paint, but there are some pros and cons as well. The pros are that the tubes are made of a more substantial material; they look like metal but they may be something else. They are too new to leak, but I ll bet they don t. The labels are printed on the tube and so can t come off and the tubes are open so we don t have to use a nail to poke them open. The paint seems very buttery and none of the tubes are stiff. The cons are that the yellows are very transparent, and I had to add titanium white to make them more opaque, but it is a minor irritant. All sets will come with colors you might never use; I seldom use burnt sienna and never umber and get my browns from mixing green and red. In time I may shift to buying the 38ml tubes singly rather than buying the set. These paints are not loaded with driers like the Soho so the paint on the palette stays wet longer but so does your painting; for some that might be a pro and for others a con. The photograph of my palette shows the basic mix of colors that I always use. Then, depending on what I am painting, I add colors that I might need that are difficult to mix, like purple, so I put Dioxazine Purple on my Palette, and add Magenta and some of the bright greens that are offered in the set. One con is that these colors are not available in the 22ml size as single tubes so if you want to add colors you have to get the 38ml tubes. Not a huge con for most of us, but the Soho 21ml tube is available singly. Jerry s Artarama and Dick Blick both sell a wide range of other manufacturers of oil paint, most of which will cost more than these house brands. In time you may want to try some of the these tried and true brands; Grumbacher, Winsor Newton, Rembrandt, Utrecht, and for the very wealthy Old Holland and Blockx. Paints that have hue after their color name usually means it is made with organic synthetic colors and does not contain cadmium or cobalt which is very expensive and adds a hefty price tag to paint that is pure. But organic synthetic colors are vibrant, and often better than the cadmium counterpart. Hue is also used to designate colors that are a modern mix of pigments to replicate historic colors that are not available or fugitive (not lightfast) colors, or colors that are extremely dangerous by today s standards. The Set contains ml (0.74 oz) tubes of Titanium White, Ivory Black, Crimson Alizarin, Cadmium Red Hue, Yellow Ochre, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue Hue, Sap Green, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Zinc White, Buff Titanium, Cadmium Yellow Pale Hue, Cadmium Orange Hue, Dioxazine Purple, Permanent Light Green, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Prima- 10

12 NOTES ON COLOR AND PALETTE MANAGEMENT Color out of the tube Color mixed with white Raw Sienna Yellow Ochre Ultramarine Blue Cobalt Blue Viridian Alizarin Crimson Cadmium Red Light Cadmium Yellow Medium 1. The photo shows my very basic palette. Normally I use more colors than pictured here, but if you are trying to save money this palette will be fine for your painting. More colors may be added as you go along. Color is very personal, but you can keep it simple at first. You need only the primaries to paint well but with most brands of paint it is necessary to have more selections as paint doesn t mix as well as we might like it to and a bright orange out of the tube is brighter than a mix of yellow and red. 2. I arrange my colors from light to dark. (With a few exceptions) Many artists have different schemes for arranging their palettes, but the point is to put the same colors in the same place each time, so you don t fumble around looking in your box for the right color. Many dark colors appear similar, as you can see on the top row. In low light conditions you might have to add a bit of white to a small dab just to identify which is which if you have squirted paint all over your palette. 3. Generally the Impressionist palette was based on a warm and cool primary color, and from them secondary colors were derived. White, and sometimes black was added. Be careful of both white and black; white makes colors chalky and black makes them muddy. 4. Lay out all your colors when you start to work. A missing color is like a key on a piano that won t work. You can t play a masterpiece if middle C is missing, and you can t paint a masterpiece if you decide to skimp on colors because of their price. Put them all out, perhaps in smaller quantities. Very low cost paint is available these days and a small squeeze of paint costs pennies. Skip one of your Starbucks each week and you will save more than enough to cover a full palette of paint! 11

13 5. Cadmium colors are more expensive. Paint manufacturers have synthetic colors that usually have hue in their label. These are fine for us to use, as cadmium is getting scarce and the pigments are not as good as they once were. 6. The primary colors are: Yellow, Red, Blue. Technically from these three colors you can mix everything. We add a warm yellow and a cool yellow, Cadmium Lemon, and Cadmium yellow medium. Cadmium Red Light and Alizarin Crimson. Cobalt Blue and Ultramarine Blue. Blue and Yellow makes green, red and yellow makes orange, and red and blue make violet. These mixed colors are called secondary colors. It s a good idea to know this by heart. So memorize it NOW! Refer to the color chart on page 7 to get a good visual of what this item says. 7. The primary and secondary colors, plus yellow ochre, white and perhaps raw sienna and maybe Paynes gray, are just about all you need to start. I make a black by mixing alizarin, ultramarine and viridian. Other earth colors may be added to help in mixing grays. Naples yellow is a wonderful soft substitute for white. Be careful of Naples yellow, it contains lead. Never put your brush in your mouth, or your fingers, or eat with painty hands. 8. Keep your colors simple. Mix grays and browns from what you have rather than relying on mixing black and white to make a gray. Mix two complimentary colors together to make gray when white is added. The complimentary colors are: red/green, blue/orange, violet/yellow. Mixing red and green together makes brown. Add a little more red, or a little more green, perhaps some white and splendid browns can be mixed on your palette or on your canvas. 9. Although it s not necessary, a color wheel is a handy gadget and not expensive in most art stores and catalogs. A color wheel will show you the primary, secondary and complimentary colors, as well as giving you many intermediate colors and harmonious hues. A nice one is illustrated on page Wipe your brush all the time when changing colors. Rinse your brush in solvent and wipe to dry it, when going from dark to light, light to dark. 11. Never let paint dry where you are mixing on the palette. Scrape it off after each session and wipe it clean with solvent and a rag. I do leave the original additions around the edges and scrape them when they are skinned over or starts to feel gummy. 12. I have a plastic Masterson box so I can travel with a loaded palette in case I want to paint the next day or two. Cheap paints will skin over very quickly, but more expensive paints will stay fresh much longer. Some painters put their palettes in the freezer, or under water, but I find it is not worth the trouble. I make my own palettes so I can have a neutral background. Store-bought palettes are fine to use, but don t fit well into the Masterson box, and sometimes they require an application of sealer. I hate using throwaway paper sheets, as they feel slippery under my brush and somehow the brush doesn t load very well. If you must use them please find the Richeson brand which are gray instead of white.

14 Art has been a passion with Gainor for most of her life, and she can remember drawing pictures as a toddler and sometimes she would feign illness to stay home from school and draw pictures all day. In spite of her academic nonchalance she managed to complete college with a BA degree in English. But painting continues to be a passion and has been her main occupation even though she has had many jobs allied with the graphic arts and printing industries. She considers herself a realist painter and has been greatly influenced by the Impressionists. She studied painting at the Art Students League, in New York, with Robert Brackman and later at the National Academy of Design and Lyme Academy of Fine arts, studying painting, drawing and sculpture. Her paintings are characterized by her love affair with color and design, and she frequently uses fruits and vegetables as subject matter, although she loves to paint a wide variety of subject matter, including landscapes and portraits of people and animals. Her mediums are Oil, Watercolor, Pastel, Egg Tempera, a variety of drawing media and Monotype printmaking. Her love of art is reflected by a love of traditional artist materials and techniques although she is familiar with and has great affection for many contemporary artists and their mediums. Her subjects are still life, landscape, symbolic still life paintings, and portraits. She conducts classes and workshops in painting and drawing. She sometimes works with students privately as well. She has exhibited her work widely in New England in the Tampa Bay area and has had several solo shows, including a 50-year Retrospective of her work in the fall of 2005 at Horizon Line Gallery in Temple Terrace. She is a member of many art organizations including the TESA (The Society of Exhibiting Artists), The Monotype Guild of New England (honorary member), and the National League of American Pen Women (Art and Letters Member). Her paintings and portraits are in many private collections, and she can be found on the pages of Wikipedia Gainor E. Roberts all rights reserved gainor@tampabay.rr.com Winter 2019