You Asked – Brushes and Aluminum Cans..
Today’s question comes from Donna :
Donna Writes:
“When painting with acrylics can I use an aluminum can to hold the water I clean my brushes in between painting? Is plastic better than aluminum?”
Do you have any information that might help Donna?
Please leave your response in the comments box below.
Still Life Pastel Drawing Demonstration
This demonstration is courtesy of Dan Gray.
Visit his website to learn more about him and to view more of his work
Cherry Bomb Still Life Demo
I was out in the forest with an Oldsmobile but the rain started to fall so back into the studio with a still life for rest of the day
Layout
I am using tobbacco coloured canson, I work all over including the background
Adding definition to my objects
Warming up, working from light to dark
Refining
Warming up the base and adding more blossom, refining detail
Background
Lowering the contrast and working the background
Final work
Working all over on detail and values, cooling the background to try and make the blossoms jump
Cherry Bomb
18″ x 20“
Landscape Painting Lesson – How to Render & Simplify Trees
This landscape painting lesson is courtesy of Barry Waldman of Interactive Art School.
A Revolutionary Way to Learn to Draw & Paint
Student uses a Digital Camera (supplied in your Student Sign Up Kit along with Textbooks & Supplies) to take digital photos of their completed assigned Lesson Artwork for each lesson. The student sends those photos as email attachments to the teacher who draws, paints & comments on the work & posts a critique of each lesson on our WEB site, a personalized How-To-Do-It-Better Critique for the student to view 24/7/365.
Follow this link to visit the Interactive Art School!
Landscape Painting Lesson – Simplify Trees
A sculptor student asked about how one does images of trees and further how to simplify them as the complexity of painting a million leaves can make an artist batty. Some painters and sculptors want to paint every leaf…bless them…for the rest of us this mini-lesson is about:
A. Making realistic trees
B. Simplifying those trees in our images (paintings, drawings, sculpture)
First there are countless kinds of trees and then millions of variations within those– two shown here, they couldn’t be more different
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(above left: photo of wide tree…….above right bare trees from my painting “Snow Gardens” below:)
We could go on and on with many other tree shapes, sizes and variations, but let’s focus on one tree, analyze it in the following steps:
I. Let’s figure out how to make the tree real
II. Let’s explore how to simplify the real tree we create in various degrees of simplicity
On the left below is a photo of a row of Magnolia trees… confusing, right?
As a reference for a painting…lets analyze one tree:
1. The original photo
2. That photo made more contrasty to start to see the form better revealed (this is done here with photo manipulation in sketching in nature you would squint your eyes to achieve this effect)
3. I did a 3d model of the tree to show its basic underlying form
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A tree – like everything we see, has a basic form or a series of basic forms as its understructure. Students often get lost, particularly with trees, in painting each leaf …while to make it real its underlying structure needs to be communicated.
To make an object seem solid, one needs to understand the following:
Study the above and also the mini-Lessons on Form (click on the blue links below):
One needs to mass the tones in groups based on the above — the darkest tones on the shadow sides of objects, middle tones in the transitions from light to dark and the lighted tones in the most light stuck areas of an object.
Just below is a painting of a group of leaves from the tree photographed above (you can paint the rest of the tree in this level of detail – I’m just not going to do it …it would take almost forever)
Now lets explore how to paint the tree simpler, then still simpler: on the left is the original photo, then a simpler painted version, then an even simpler version on the extreme right:
Left is a reprise of the source photo from above……then, the tree painted to be round in lots of colors and values…. then the another interpretation SIMPLIFIED—into three tonal masses
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In my paintings above, I eliminated the sky and simplified the outer shape of the tree to better demonstrate the principals of form and the simplification.
In the right hand most simplified tree, I used only THREE color mixtures to paint the tree On the left hand side is the transitional middles tone Up through the middle is the light struck tone…then some middle tones again to step down from the high tones of the light struck leaf masses…. and…on the right side I have massed the darks…the resulting tree is simple but solid…no details, not painted leaf by leaf
POSTERIZED: Simpler still– areas are divided into a few colors – tree leaf area into just light stuck side and shadow side
(See Wikipedia definition of “POSTERIZATION” at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterization
The ultimate simplification- silhouette…First in black and white…
Then – silhouetted “forest” in color:
The trees in the foreground are darker and more vibrant (more intense color green… while the taller “forest” behind is a lighter and bluer, less intense color blue-green— this is a reflection of the concept of “atmospheric perspective”…as things get further from the viewer’s eye… they get light in tone, less chromatic (color intensive) and have less contrast (see
mini Online Lesson 4) for a fuller exploration of atmospheric perspective.
To see examples of simplified trees -see the work of these painters and photographers:
Edward Hopper*
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/MCG/FH536~Gas -1940-Posters.jpg
http://ursispaltenstein.ch/blog/images/uploads_img/hopper_2.jpg
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/06autumn/images/jenkins_fig2large.jpg
_______________________________________________ and
Fairfield Porter
http://www.tfaoi.com/am/10am/10am132.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ec/Fairfield_Porter’s
http://www.tfaoi.com/cm/3cm/3cm617.jpg
also:
Fairfield Porter on Mark Harden’s “Artchive” Painting titled “Amherst Campus“:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/porter/porter_amherst.jpg.html
Fairfield Porter on:
The Bridgeman Art Library:
_______________________________________________
and
Ansel Adams
http://www.blognow.com.au/uploads/l/Llennodo/19959.jpg
http://doors.stanford.edu/ansel-adams/iceberg-panorama.jpg
_______________________________________________
and
Edward Hopper
* A note about Edward Hopper, the great American Illustrator and Painter – he was a master of “leaving out”, or simplifying… you can see it in his trees, his people, his houses and interiors…he leaves out detail…one fact few observers notice is that there is no glass in any windows Hopper ever painted. Study his most famous paining “Nighthawks” a picture of people seen in a late night diner in Manhattan, NYC through windows – NO GLASS.(Yes, there is a hint of it at the far left where the window curves around the corner – but not in the large part of the diner window and also, look across the street at the shop windows “Nighthawks” can be seen on the Artchive website at:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/nighthwk.jpg.html
Look at the other Hoppers on the Artchive site like “Chop Suey”
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper.html
Once you get to the Hopper bio at the page above, click on the “VIEW IMAGE LIST“
To sign up for the course, click here.
Watercolor and Pastel Painting Demonstration – Let’s Paint Winter Woods!
About Christine Kane
Christine Kane is a pastel and watercolor artist who is inspired by the Midwest landscape and it’s seasons. To find new ideas for her paintings, she hikes in the forest preserves during all seasons.
Christine began drawing at an early age. She focused her education on art and has a degree in Graphic Design. She is continuing her studies and is currently pursuing a degree in Natural Resources.
Translating weather is also evident in her work. “Weather makes a landscape painting come to life. How I love to show leaves blowing in the Autumn time, snow falling in winter, or a beautiful thunderstorm approaching in my summer paintings.”
Christine finds God’s handwork in all aspects of nature and tries to translate her awe and reverence in her artwork. Never disappointed, she relies on His creation for inspiration.
To learn more about Christine and to view more of her work, please visit her site by following the link below:
==> http://letspaintnature.com/
Christine’s work can be viewed at the LaGrange Art Gallery
Watercolor and Pastel Painting Demonstration – Let’s Paint Winter Woods!
About three years ago I went hiking at Bull Frog Lake, right before evening in January. I came upon a scene that made me pause for a moment and fall in love. Winter’s intense setting sun was casting long shadows from the trees in the woods. Right on que it seemed, three crows in the distance began to caw. I almost wanted to cry. Call me a fool for nature, but West Nile almost eliminated all the crows in my area and I haven’t heard that beautiful, “CAW, CAW, CAW”, in a very long time. They are my 2nd favorite bird in the world.
So here we go! Let’s remember that moment forever by painting the winter woods…
Step 1: I am using an Ampersand Pastelbord 16×20. This is going to be a watercolor and pastel painting. With charcoal, make a simple sketch before you paint. Remember the 3rd’s rule…great composition happens in thirds. Notice my horizon line is 1/3 from the top. My deer tracks will be 1/3rd from the left.
Here is my reference photo. I had it enlarged and printed at 8×10. Notice I have a clear plastic cover on it. This will help you greatly! I am a very messy painter and get junk all over the place (and I don’t care…it’s part of the process), if I didn’t protect the picture it would have been destroyed.
Step 2: Turn your board upside down. This will help the paint flow down with gravity. Spray the sky with clean water. Using watercolor paints, paint Naples yellow in the sky (remember we are upside down so it is at the bottom). Next, with a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber, paint some distant trees using up and down strokes.
Step 3: When dry, paint some far trees using ultramarine blue and a lot of water so the mixture is not dark. Paint closer trees using a darker mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber.
Here is a close-up of the distant trees. I love how the watercolors spread out at the edges representing rough bark…YES! Effortless painting!
Step 4: When completely dry, turn your board right side up. In this step I am just laying down big blocks of color using watercolors. I am only using cobalt blue, ultramarine blue and alizarin in different mixtures. You might be thinking, “Are you nuts? Those colors are so dark!” Don’t worry, most of this will be covered by pastels.
Step 5: With sap green, ultramarine blue, and alizarin crimson, make a black mixture and paint the closest trees. Try to vary their sizes. That took me a long time to accomplish in my early years of painting. Your brain just wants to make trees, so after a while you realise they are all the same thickness. NO! In nature they are all different.
Step 6: We are done with watercolors. When everything is dry, start painting with pastels. I used a medium Unison purple for the tracks and shadows and a medium blue for snow.
Step 7 Final: Make layers and layers of snow, using three different light blues. I also used light purple for the snow as well. On the tree trunks I painted spots of deep dark purple and fuchsia. You can’t really see it, but it is there. I also painted tiny spots of yellow in the snow to reflect the setting sun.
Don’t worry if you do not paint with pastels. You can use the same principles to paint with oils. It’s all about layer upon layer.
“Before Dusk in Deep Snow”
16×20
This painting will be on display at the LaGrange Art Gallery March 2010. I hope you enjoyed this step by step painting demonstration on how to paint a winter scene in the woods using watercolors and pastels.
Artist Spotlite – Christine Kane
Artist Name: Christine Kane
Location: Chicago, IL USA
Title of Artwork: Before Dusk in Deep Snow
Dimensions of Artwork : 16×20
Medium: Watercolor and Pastel
Website: http://letspaintnature.com
Describe this Piece: This picture was inspired by a hike at Maple Lake in Willow Springs, IL after a heavy snow. I stopped at this particular location to admire the the soft evening colors and deer tracks that lead into the deep forest. Suddendly, I heard crows “cawing” in the distance. I always wanted to remember that moment so it became eternal in my painting. Nature is the greatest teacher.
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