Here’s another study (unfinished) that I did during that wonderful Maggie Siner workshop awhile back. Maggie wanted us to be very definite in matching colors and then put a big juicy stroke in the MIDDLE of the shape we were working on.
Terracotta Pot, White Cat & Dino on Pig-shaped Cutting Board. Unfinished. Oil on Linen.
Never put your first paint stroke next to an edge, she says, or you’ll be tempted to paint the object rather than the shape. Maggie gave us a wonderful motto to paint by: Great shapes, not great objects, make a good painting!
I made a quick portrait study yesterday during a class I’m taking with Maud Taber-Thomas. I hadn’t been able to attend for several weeks and was happy to be back.
Dozing Damsel. Oil on Arches Oil Paper.
During the first class, Maud had recommended as homework that we draw a series of skulls, each in a different position. I was tickled to have found online an inexpensive, life-size plastic model. I brought it in yesterday to show, along with the drawings I’d done. You can catch a glimpse of the skull herself in the last post, where she’s shown modeling for the painting.
Skull drawings. Charcoal. (Doesn’t that one at middle left look like Donald Duck?)
Post-show doldrums are a great time to share insights from prior workshops. Several of us ‘7 Palettes’ have been sharing new color mixing techniques this week. Here’s what I passed along from the fabulous Terry Miura workshop my sister Ceci and I attended awhile back.
Here’s a glimpse of Terry’s palette:
Terry Miura’s Limited Palette
And here are insights about painting the figure using a limited earth-tone palette:
Select one of each ‘primary’ color, plus white: yellow ochre; transparent iron oxide red (‘earth red’ in some brands) , ivory black (standing in for blue) and Titanium white.
Using a palette knife, make two ‘puddles’ of paint consisting of a bit of each of the primary colors (in varying proportions, obviously): a light-toned puddle for use in painting light areas of the figure and a dark toned puddle for shadowed areas.
To add variety to the light and shadow areas of the painting, ‘push’ each puddle toward other colors and values by adding relatively more of desired dominant colors and less of the subordinated colors. For example, mix into part of the light puddle a bit more yellow ochre & some black to make a greenish variant.
Make sure that none of the darker values in the light puddle is as dark as the lightest light value in the dark puddle and vice versa. Imagine a line down your palette between the two puddles to keep them strictly separate.
Paint the light areas of the figure using only the light puddle and its variants; and paint the shadowed areas of the figure using only with the dark puddle and its variants.
Assuming you’ve drawn the figure fairly well, you’ve got a fine looking painting!
Two days after the portrait workshop, Ceci and I drove over to Easton, MD for another workshop, this time at the Easton Studio & School. Bernie Dellario, from Washington DC, was teaching a two day workshop on how to travel and paint with dried gouache. It was Bernie’s first time teaching, but he “nailed it”. Great demos, excellent circulation among the group of painters, and on-point feedback made for a great two days.
Here’s one of Bernie’s colorful demos (only partially finished because he wanted to save time so we could paint):
One of my paintings:
And here’s one by my sister Cecilia. I love it!
The group had such a good time during the workshop that we unanimously decided to keep in touch AND even start a blog to record our gouache progress. Check it out: Marks and Remarks: Gouache and consider subscribing.
Two weeks ago my sister Ceci traveled up from Louisiana to take a couple of art workshops with me. The first was a three morning (!) portrait painting workshop with Maud Taber-Thomas of the Yellow Barn. Ahead of time I was very skeptical that we’d be able to learn much about portrait painting in three half-days — especially in view of the four months it had taken me to do the one of Dad.
Maud used a very clever curriculum to crack that nut. Morning One: Draw a charcoal or pencil sketch of the model. Here’s our excellent model.
And my initial sketch.
Morning Two: Apply that sketch to our canvas and paint a monochromatic value study (in burnt sienna oil paint, in our case) over the sketch, making any drawing adjustments we thought necessary.
Morning Three: Apply more colors over the value study, using an extremely limited palette of white, yellow ochre, venetian red, and ultramarine blue. That gave us three primary colors (of sorts), and the possibility of mixing the secondaries, green, orange & purple (of sorts). Here’s how mine stood at the end of the third morning.
And here’s how it looked after a bit of tinkering back at home. I tried to soften the jaw line; make her eyes and mouth more pleasant, as our lovely model’s had been; and re-contour the edge of her face on the left side. I’m encouraging sister Ceci to post hers too! Hers were lovely – much more painterly than mine.
