About Karin

Karin Wells is an artist of amazing versatility. She graduated with honors from both the New England School of Art and Design, Boston, 1965, and the Butera School of Art, Boston, 1986. Karin has enjoyed a career as an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator and sign painter. She also taught Life Drawing and Painting for many years. She has most recently studied for three years at The New England School of Classical Painting in Greenfield, New Hampshire, under the direction of Numael Pulido.

To expand her craft, Karin has traveled throughout Europe studying the Old Masters. Her art reflects the deep influence of these great works. Karin demonstrates a remarkable facility for likeness and for the use of light.

The artist is a member of The American Society of Portrait Artists, Portrait Society of America, The Portrait Society of Atlanta, and The Copley Society of Boston.

To learn more about Karin and to view more of her amazing work, be sure to visit her website and blog by following the links below:

Website: http://www.karinwells.com/

Blog: http://karinwells.blogspot.com/

If you would like to be notified when Karin updates her blog, be sure to click the “Follow” link in the upper left hand corner of her blog.

Counterintuitive Painting – or – The Problem Might Not Be What You Think It Is

Grrrrrr. It fools me every time and happens all too frequently at the easel.

I will try to keep a camera handy and make an effort to “grab” this problem as it arises so you can recognize that thorny old “the problem isn’t what you think it is….it is probably the opposite” situation.

The problem is often a light/dark thing.

Above is a 6″ x 9″ oil sketch of a cement angel by Gaudi that I recently saw in Barcelona. So far so good.

I finish the dead underpainting layer (raw umber and titanium white) and there isn’t much contrast in my reference photo…it’s made out of cement after all. However, I fail to capture the “sculptural” quality.

What to do? I glaze it and build lots of light. And then I build some more and it isn’t working.

But then I realize that it isn’t LIGHT that is the problem…it is that the darks are not dark enough.

So I stop working on the light and pay attention to the dark. . . duh . . . and then I get it right.

The light is unchanged in the last two pictures…but the dark has become much darker and thus it works now.

Although I am getting better, I’d say that I still guess wrong about once a week and think that:

1. The lights aren’t light enough
or
2. The darks aren’t dark enough

But the answer is frequently the opposite of what I think it is.

UPDATE: This is the final painting ( just couldn’t leave it alone).

I picked up the brush to add a little more dark and couldn’t resist adding a little lettering in the lower right to sort of balance the odd composition.

Here’s a detail of the lettering (above).

I was once a sign painter before I took up oil painting….and I love lettering.

This little 6″x9″ Gaudi Angel oil sketch will be part of a fundraiser for the Portrait Society of America.

About Jon Friedman

Jon R. Friedman was born in 1947 in Washington, D.C.  He graduated from Princeton University with Bachelor of Arts Degree and received a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Cranbrook Art Academy located in Michigan.

Jon R. Friedman paints landscapes, figure paintings, and commissioned portraits. He also creates assemblages and constructions and site-specific installations. Friedman has studios in both New York City and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. See Jon Friedman’s Resumé for more information.

Follow this link to visit Jon’s Website

Paint Water and Sky with Jon R. Friedman

One Clean Sweep:

Before beginning Low Tide, Sunrise, I decided that the essence of the image should be an instantaneous, panoramic sweep. “I wanted the painting to smack the viewer’s eye with an elemental immediacy, first presenting a luminous triad of air, earth, and water — and then releasing the viewer to linger over details of tone and texture. ”

Five-Step Demo

1. Composition Sketch

After priming my canvas with acrylic gesso, I sketched my composition with a diluted acrylic wash. Nibbling away at the image with brushes wouldn’t give me the fast feeling of dramatic, holistic color chords I wanted, so I decided to use my Iwata spray gun. With masking tape and plastic sheeting, I covered the beach and water and then sprayed on the intial sky color with Golden liquid acrylic. In this photo the plastic has been pulled away, showing the first application of color. Before moving on, I remasked and continued spraying until I was fully satisfied with the sky.

2. Basic Coloring

Next I covered the sky and sprayed the basic light blue-gray color of the water over the lower canvas. My studio doesn’t have a good exhaust system so I worked on the initial stages of the canvas outside.

3. Frisket Paper

Moving inside, I laid the canvas flat on a tabletop and adhered prepared frisket paper (waterproof tracing paper with an adhesive backing) to the painting’s surface. Over the next few days, I cut the tidal-pool and runnel shapes from the paper with a frisket knife—which has a blade that rotates 360 degrees for cutting intricate shapes. The transparent frisket paper allowed me to see my acrylic sketch underneath, but because this sketch was rough, I was drawing and composing as I cut.

When I finished cutting, I pulled away the frisket surrounding the pools and runnels and then sprayed the exposed beach areas with dark, gray-browns. In this photo, the spraying is finished, and the tape, plastic and frisket-paper mask are removed. The basic color chords and the fundamental divisions of the composition are in place.

4. Blending

I used oils and a variety of brushes for the clouds, which feel “meaty” and tactile compared to the spray-painted sky. To intensify the lower right of the sky, I mixed my colors with Grumbacher Alkyd painting medium and blended them into the spray-painted sky, using a variety of soft, fan-shaped brushes. For the subtle tonalities and tide-carved surface of the beach, I dragged and pressured paint onto the canvas with silicone-tipped Colour Shapers (Royal Sovereign). These let me create precise edges, where one color butts against another, and also smear colors together seamlessly—so the beach appears shaped by the surf rather than assembled from calculated brushstrokes.

5. Finishing Touches

Dragging and blending paint across an 8-foot horizontal canvas is an almost athletic activity, and the workability of the paint changes from moment to moment, resulting in a kind of give-and-take wrestling match. After about an hour, the paint is too dry to continue manipulating. The final appearance of the beach is the result of many built-up layers, leading to a dense, subtly striated opacity that stands in marked contrast to the sky’s transparent luminosity.

Originally I had included the diminutive figure of a fisherman off to the left, like a visual staple joining beach, water and sky. In the end, I eliminated the figure because it was too much of a visual magnet, preventing the eye from roaming freely along the beach in Low Tide, Sunrise (acrylic and oil, 30×96).

By Philip Howe

The following oil painting demonstration is courtesy of Philip Howe . When you are finished viewing this demonstration, please take a moment to visit Philip’s site to view more of his artwork and to learn more about him.

You may also be interested in Philip’s New Book:

“Angels – The Artwork of Philip Howe”

This book is 134 full-color pages of the beautiful artwork of Philip Howe. The reproductions are from his spiritual and dream series of oil paintings, with dozens of images, exclusive close-up shots from the originals, and over 40 pages of demonstrations for artists and collectors. It is printed on soft matte paper, the same as our quality prints, so the color is rich and clean, with each spread designed to fit the images.

Follow this link for more details on the book.

The Old Conquistador – Oil Painting Portrait Demo

This portrait was done as more of an experiment to play with traditional techinques using a solid brown underpainting and a fairly tight painting style. My friend John posed for the piece and tried his best to look mean, but its just not in him. I hope this shows some expression of feeling for what the old soldiers must have felt in seeing a new world being torn apart yet knowing their own aging and destiny in troubled times. I may do more images of past figures, it was certainly fun to do.

Pencil drawing used to project onto canvas

Pencil line with thin reddish brown oil was, then let dry overnight

Heavy oil with liquin medium washed over then let to dry overnight

Burnt umber browns for underpainting base

The first 3 images are really just about an hours worth of work, with an overnight drying time in between each stage. Basically I used an oil wash with mineral spirits to tone the raw canvas and seal the thin pencil drawing. This piece is only 20×30″ and I often do quick studies this size to break from larger paintings, so I am in a habit of doing them in a few quick stages. The second image uses liquin mixed with a heavier wash and the 3rd image, above, uses liquin medium with burnt umber to form a base value, both drying faster by the use of the medium and set in front of a fan overnight.

Black and darker brown over the dry brown underpainting

First opaques added

More opaques added, arm redrawn and some color begins

More redrawing of the arm, further color

Background gray added, first pass

Background futher blocked in, ready for overpainting of 2nd darker layer

At this point most of the base values are in and I can begin to darken the painting. Since I don’t have to worry about the drawing any more, I can concentrate on the feeling and density of the next layers to enhance the realism overall. The difference between this stage and the final, below, is 4 or 5 layers of transparent paint, carefully built up to form a rich overall tone, especially in the skin and background areas. Browns work especially well to create a golden patina and there are several paint makers now offering a range of quality transparent hues. I especially like the ones from Dan Smith. If you have questions of specific colors used, I can list them here for future reference, although its the translucent combination of colors, red over brown over a golden ochre, even some transparent blue to deepen the shadows, that give the overall tone, not just brown on a white or gray base.

The Old Conquisador 20x30" oil on canvas

Head detail. Note the dense skin tones built up from 4 or 5 layers over the base flesh

About Brian MacNeil

Brian MacNeil is an artist of great talent and imagination and is one of the new generation of Realist painters that are the new avant-garde in the art world. Brian studied at the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, from 2004 to 2008 and showed himself to be an extremely gifted student, understanding, as though instinctively, what his instructors were teaching…

Learn more about Brian and view of his work by visiting his Websites:

http://brianmacneil.com/

http://brianmacneil.blogspot.com/

Master Copy Challenge by Brian MacNeil

(Click Images For Larger View)

Master copies have always been a joy for me. I feel I am really able to learn the language of oil painting by trying to reproduces these amazing works. With each painting I witness may vocabulary broadening with new understanding of how the materials flow. Another benefit I’ve found with Master Copies is a new sense of design. The painters of the past, well at least the painters I look up to seem to portray there subjects with more style and vigor. For example the elegance of many Van Dyke’s portraits is experienced by the elongation of the body, more commonly noticed in the neck and hands he paints. On the other hand the artist Rembrandt designed many of his figures quit stubby and round. In Rembrandt and his many self-portraits the drawing of one is often rather different from an other.

The beautiful and amazing thing is that no matter which portrait you are looking at you know it is him. Rembrandt has a way of presenting an intimate scene were we relate and feel apart of. I once heard a story about Annigoni where a lot of his portraits didn’t look much like the sitter. The point wasn’t so much to get a photo realistic image of the persons but there essence. The part of the person that is felt and not seem by eyes. A sentiment that one feels like a memory or a dream. I believe that is why so many flocked to have there portraits done by Annigoni. They wanted to be transformed into something deeper then the way they looked.

So the importance of Master Copies is that they provide you with information that painting from life cannot. There are tricks and techniques that are not always visible in nature so one can either get real creative or look back to the masters to help us tell our stories. They teach us how to paint lips, what edges to blur, and open our eyes to see what colors are used to make a white drapery.

The Cornelis Van Der Geest has been one of my favorites since I first laid eyes on it. Even today it still gives me goose bumps looking into the gaze of it’s eyes. Every time that I am in London I go straight to the National Gallery to see it like i’m visiting an old friend. I never get tired of it. It becomes a new painting every time I study it. Often it makes me want to give up painting all together when I think about the fact that at the age of 19 Van Dyke painted this marvelous and sophisticated head.

First off i made a pencil drawing to place all the features to get familiar with the shapes and tonal relationships. I find it useful to make this drawing first because the whole time that I am drawing I am imaging my plan of attack. It may seem like an extra step but in my experience it saves me time in the long run. By the time I have brush in hand I have already painted it several times in my head working out all the kinks.

basic block-in

pencil drawing heightened with chalk

After I have transferred the drawing to canvas I use Raw Umber and Lead White to tone and lighten the drawing. I am in a way making a map for my self to follow later on with color. In this study this is the last time I will use Raw Umber.

The underpainting

I left the painting to dry over night and to be economical with time I started in at the lower portion of the head letting the opaque passages of white dry a little bit longer. The colors I have chosen are limited to just Lead White, Yellow Ocher, Burnt Siena and Ivory Black. Also I am using a Sun-Thicken linseed oil medium that I have been told was used by both Rubens and Van Dyke.

First placements of color

In this stage of the painting I have a majority of the colors and tones placed. I’ll spend the next day or so fixing the drawing and adjusting the tones and colors. I am very careful no to work too add much color to the forehead at this point. I have keyed the values lighter there with some heavy impastos. I did this because I wanted the the forehead to be of lighter value and higher chroma. To get that affect I will carefully make thin semi-opaque passes over the forehead. Modeling the forms just enough not to end up mud.

Color and tones

More correcting and modeling of small forms. The fancy brush stokes I leave out until I am confident enough that the drawing, hues and tones are relatively in the right places.

smaller forms being modeled

Now with all the guess work behind me I decided to repaint the entire head all over again. I wanted all of the strokes of paint to be painted into the one beside it. Also I was noticing that the flesh was looking a little dull and grey. I tend to like broken color and cooler flesh tones in paintings but this to me as it was lacking uniformity and life. I repainted the head and half the collar in a day. I haven’t touched it since because other paintings are taking up my time.

The unfinished end result

Thank you very much for viewing this work. You may check out the Pushing Pigments Blog to see other artist take on this same task.

By Philip Howe

The following oil painting demonstration is courtesy of Philip Howe . When you are finished viewing this demonstration, please take a moment to visit Philip’s site to view more of his artwork and to learn more about him.

You may also be interested in Philip’s New Book:

“Angels – The Artwork of Philip Howe”

This book is 134 full-color pages of the beautiful artwork of Philip Howe. The reproductions are from his spiritual and dream series of oil paintings, with dozens of images, exclusive close-up shots from the originals, and over 40 pages of demonstrations for artists and collectors. It is printed on soft matte paper, the same as our quality prints, so the color is rich and clean, with each spread designed to fit the images.

Follow this link for more details on the book.

Morning- demo using oil over gouache technique

This painting is all about color and light, so I pushed my usual palette to try and achieve a nice tonal effect that suggests the first light of morning, that magical time of only a few minutes where the cooler ambient glow gives way to warm sunlight.

On this piece I used an old technique of gouache, a water-soluable opaque medium, as an underpainting for the oil. I did a fairly loose drawing with pencil then spray fixed the drawing a few times with light coats. I took a 3″ house painter’s type brush and quickly blocked in all the major areas of color using a lot of gouache mixed in a plate as I progressed.

The gouache drys very quickly and leaves stroke edges so to get a soft effect here and there, I used an airbrush with only water in it to mist areas then took a soft mop brush and simply blurred the areas. This leaves a nice, smooth base on a gessoed board or thick watercolor stock, but on canvas, it absorbs into the weave and is fairly stubborn about moving around the surface even with a heavier mist. For my purposes here, I just need a good color base that allows me to pull out the highlights and achieve quick chiaroscuro lighting.

The gouache leaves a gritty pull, unlike acrylic or even oil washes, and is an ideal surface for pastel. I checked with a few conservators and they agreed that it makes a very good underpainting for oil and is very permanent, so long as you stay away from the fugitive processed colors which contain dyes for commercial purposes.

Same size concept rough

Gouache block in

Gouache subtracted or pulled out from soft color areas

The top image is the gouache fully brushed on and smoothed over with just a few highlights pulled out of the mountain area in the lower left. This is ‘subtractive’ painting, a technique used by many illustrators in various ways. One method is to do a very finished pencil drawing then coat the drawing with gouache or oil. This requires very little opaque work as the half-tone drawing beneath is simialr to a tinted photo and the realism is immediate.

The value, or lightness and darkness of the image, is based more on the accuracy and completeness of the drawing rather than the color that goes over it. So I have always looked at subtractive work as more like colored draings than painted pieces, but the effect can look beautiful and rich since the colors are thin and often luminous. Some of my favorite illustrators use this approach. Its fast and easy and produces a beautiful effect once you learn how to control the thin color without opaquing for corrections. Once you opaque an area, it defeats the translucent effect, but you can let that dry and glaze over this area if needed.

The lower image shows the full painting with pulled out areas to create highlights, using various wet brushes, Q-tips, rags or whatever else thats absorbent enough to pull off the dry color. The cool thing about subtractive painting is that the thin color over white, once pulled out, leaves a tint, or lighter natural highlight of the surrounding area. And the added benefit of the gouache is its reworkable, to a degree, simply by spraying more water over it and buffing the area again, I usually use oils over a tighter drawing, but the oil effect is a bit more time demanding to get right before it drys and gets sticky if you try spraying a solvent over it, like turps or mineral spirits (which you should never breath in anyway). Since most of my work is very inventive, as in the mountains, foreground, wing and sky here, I can work without rushing and worrying if the paint will dry too soon for me to play with the overall tone until I get it right as a base for the oils. With gouache, I can wait years and come back to this point and just keep going until I get the effect I want.

Gouache highlights pulled out of rock area

Above, the rocks are a natural area for contrast lighting and the subtractive approach. The highlights are simply stains left from pulling off the paint. With gouache, its very easy to add opaque hightlights, say a white here and there, by simply painting on opaque color. You can even easily airbrush a soft tone or if the panel is stiff enough as this one is here, canvas backed with masonite to keep it from flexing, I could add dry pastel for some nice drawn lines and color strokes, then seal it with fixative. You can also erase or even sand areas, depending on the surface worked on.

You probably shouldn’t sand canvas, but on masonite or a gessoed panel, this could create some interesting abstract texture effects. On the sides of the work, I flipped a wet brush and splashed on water then quickly pulled it off with a towell. I never use paper towells as this leaves paper fibres and lint. Water based paints can add a lot of interesting techniques to keep the painting process interesting and the advantage of gouache allows for an much longer working time for certain effects than oils or acrylics.

Oil over fixed gouache, first coat

Oil for body base over gouache underpainting

Glazed yellow coloring over white contrast underpainting

The top image shows the additional white gouache highlights I painted in opaqely, just prior to spray fixing the gouache and adding any oil. The rich tone that immediately comes through from the oil enhances the gouache base and builds a solid color look without much additional effort. Over this I added additional glazes to build up the gold tones until I felt it had a solid feeling overall without loosing the ethereal quality I prefer.

Working on toning down the wing area

Above, the figure is nearly finished but the wing still looks too heavy, or gaudy. I want it to fade back more so here I plan to use complemetary color in semi-opaque layers to force the wing to recede and lighten up a bit. A disadvantage to the gouache base is the tendency to use bright colors and wash in color too hot for the intended area. I used to teach this technique to enthusiastic students wanting to jump into color after sealing a tight drawing on illustration board or gessoed panel.

The interesting thing is that nearly every student, out of hundreds, would invariable go for hot, even bright colors without considering atmosphere or natural color harmony to create a realistic painting from. I think thats part of the lure of gouache- these small tubes of rich, opaque color that easily flood the surface and look very illustrative.

Bright, hot color may help sell illustrations for book covers but it takes a more sophisticated approach to control a more grayed palette. This is why I use a plate as a gouache palette, with cool hues on one side and warm ones on the other- the more saturated colors are easily muted and grayed down by simply smearing warm into cool or vice versa. I have to remind myself to do this on the palette, as unlike oil, once the color is down, you can’t simply mix the paint around on the canvas. The best gouache painters seem to know this and put well calculated strokes down opaquely. Gouache on canvas is difficult to blend, but gouache on a paper surface is very easy with a soft, wet brush stroke in a scratching motion and a light touch.

Final toned down wing area

Lower right side showing gouache through oil glazing

Above, the lower right rock area came out well. I think I like this area as more of the gouache base shows through and you can see the pulled out area where I played with the paint, pushing it around and freely drawing forms from the stained area. This is similar in appearance to a fully glazed oil on canvas, but the look here comes primarily from the gouache with one two thin glazes on top for additional color.

This shot of the final, below, is fairly accurate, showing rich coloring and an overall wash of light cascading across from the left. I had first mounted the canvas on a 1/4′ masonite panel using glue, and on the back, thin wood strips for additional support along the outer edge. The framing, which I prefer to do in my studio, should be easy to fit because the edge is somewhat thnnner than streched canvas. In the future, however, I may glue thin strips to the back of masonite or find a lighter weight support thats acid free, then simply stretch the canvas around the board so that it can be removed easier if need be.

Morning final gouache/oil on canvas mounted to masonite 4×5′

Final head detail