My smallest brush was a large round size 6. It was a great way to prevent myself from getting too tight too soon so that I could properly work from general to specific. Also, in a 3 hour sketch (I’m just used to much longer) I usually run out of time before I an get to anything specific and I find that this can be a good thing for me.

oil sketch, 18" x 24"

3hr portrait sketch, oil on paper

3-hr portrait sketch, oil on paper

3-hour quick portrait sketch, Whittnie

Andrew Loomis and Matthew Innis’ latest blog post on his blog, Underpaintings, offers great reading material for these quick portraits.

Under certain lighting conditions, for example with front light or under a strong spotlight, with the subject against a dark background, the dark tones at the edge of an object may be absorbed into the background and what we really see in this instance is an area just inside the edge of the form instead of the dark light. The outermost edge of this zone blends into the background. This creates the illusion of softer edges instead of a crisp separation between the object and background. The basic lesson is what we’ve heard over and over again, we must pay attention to the edges and work very carefully at the meeting of forms. A great example is an image I’ve posted here before.

Notice how the edge of the shoulder as it turns into the form of the back is very soft, while the edge of the upper forearm of the left arm against a light drapery is much more crisp. We can also contrast the field effects happening in the skull and the right arm. The skull has a softer edge as the top of the head as it turns away from us toward the background and enters the dark light, while the right arm (also turning away from us into the background) is more lit and its dark light zone is not near the edge of the arm placed against the background. Thus the difference in their edge treatment. (At least this is how I rationalize my reading of how Caravaggio treated the two edges differently.) He may have just been copying what he saw, which proves that how he painted what he saw is accurate with visual phenomena. Yet, I suspect that he was aware of these patterns in nature and didn’t just copy nature by rote in his practice. (There are also other reasons why the skull has a softer edge than the right arm.)

For the painting I worked on in Sarah Lamb’s workshop, she had me pay attention to the edge of the gourd which was in the dark light region, against the darker background of the wooden box. This edge was much softer than the opposing edge more directly facing the light source against a cast shadow on the same dark wooden box.

With a backlit subject, the same field effects would occur with the opposite observation. Edges would be softer on the light edge against a light background as some of this lighter zone would be absorbed into the background and harder on the darker side of the form against the lighter background. This is also consistent with the rule that high contrast areas are often the sharpest areas in a painting/nature.

There are many different field effects in nature which I have yet to learn and fully understand. In essence, everything in our visual experience is a field effect since we never see objects in nature in isolation, especially color. The cognitive experience of visual phenomena is a product of many different optical illusions and our eyes are lying to our brains (or is it our brains lying to our eyes, therefore lying to itself? …If anyone knows of any books on this topic, please let me know and shoot me an email! I love this stuff!!).

We discussed another field effect at the edges of a form, in relation to color, which I’ll write as a separate post later this week. I’ve indulged in my musings enough for the evening (making good use of that extra hour we gained from Daylight Savings this weekend). It’s time to finish preparing my panels for this week’s intensive workshop-style class with Michael at the studio.

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Though I haven’t had any issues, I thought it wise to add the statement below:

Art Student’s/Blogger’s Caveat:
Everyone should always take this in consideration when reading any blog, but I’ll state it here just to be clear. Everything written on my personal blog is my interpretation of my studies and in no way should be taken as the exact teaching itself. Though I strive to understand and represent all the concepts fully and back up my writing/notes with examples, other more established posts/articles/books, science, visual phenomena, etc. there is always room for error and misunderstanding so it is the reader’s responsibility to cross-reference anything they read here. In case of any error brought to my attention, I will always point them out ASAP. (And of course, if you’ve heard otherwise or spot any incongruities, please shoot me an email since I created this blog to develop a greater, ongoing conversation amongst like-minded people and artists.)

For the final pass, I wanted to concentrate on the textures and discoloration of the object. I also wanted to be able to show the simple form of the ladle despite the variation in its local color. Overall it was a fun painting to work on and though simple it brought forth many lessons for me to learn from in terms of painting local color, light effect, color/temperature variation, chroma control, form painting and paint handling.

Rusty Ladle, oil on board

Next time, I will need to improve the edge quality and edge variation a bit more.

Rusty Ladle, 2nd Pass

Edges, color adjustments (decrease chroma) and working on the lighter end of my value range were my primary concerns this round. I struggled with the tungsten light source during the first pass. The warmth of the bulb is quite distracting so I took some time to assess the local color and the affect of the light source on it for this pass.

My poster study was a good reference and tool in helping me correct the key of the painting from the first pass, though it could have served me better. I found that my poster study was too chromatic overall and it was also missing the higher parts of the value range. To a lesser degree I repeated those mistakes, so I spent a good chunk of my time this round fixing the parts that I had made too green or yellow or too chromatic.

Once it looked like the color and value adjustments were working out both on the ladle and on the background, I concentrated on minutia and some details of texture. I hope to build up some of the rusty textures on top of this pass during my next and final round. Critiques or suggestions welcome.

Rusty Ladle

This is the first pass to the still life set-up of a simple rusty ladle. It’s under artificial lighting, and you can check out the poster study here. I’m attracted to the simplicity of the object, its colors and the old, rusty texture of the metal. And I just love the high contrast of the dark cast shadow to the light blasting the background and top section of the ladle.

I decided against a grisaille and started directly with an ébauche (first pass or underpainting, always in color – at least in the tradition/approach practiced by Bouguereau and other 19th Century painters), simply because the value range of the composition is so small and compressed. I wanted a base with color and value decisions in the underpainting to work off of for the following pass. It seemed that building on top of this and layering the textures on top of something with form, color and value made the most sense.

I began by drawing directly with a brush in an attempt to approach this painting “loosely” as I learned through Sarah Lamb’s workshop. Being more comfortable with getting the drawing “right” first – usually with pencil then transferring, I wanted to mix things up a bit this time. This confidence also springs from the fact that still life subjects are often more forgiving than the figure. Regardless of the drawing tool, it was the usual block-in stuff where I began with a loose envelope, then slowly broke this down to straight block-in lines with a lot of triangulation plus usage of vertical and horizontal plumbs “by eye” – and a knitting needle.

I resolved the drawing as well as I could. Once I had something accurate enough to build the underpainting on, I went in with brown and scumbled a very thin wash. This took place early on as I tried to treat the drawing and underpainting with a more mass drawing approach rather than a linear approach. With this technique there is more juggling with the drawing and so I continue to work on the drawing careful not to let the medium get too sloppy. The important things I keep in mind is to always improve the drawing, not lose the drawing by painting and covering lines I want to keep and I make sure things remain thin. I plan to build paint up in the lights especially since there is a lot of texture on the metal bowl and ladle.

Still Life with Garlic, underpainting

My underpainting is really a monochromatic wash-in though I used two colors, a warm and a cool, to map out the temperature changes. I first simplified things by starting with the darkest dark and moved from there. The neutral gray ground played a very strong role in how I simplified my values, slowly building up the underpainting from three values, on to four, five, etc until I was satisfied in suggesting the volume of the objects. The underpainting was “done” once I worked out the overall value and temperature relationships of the entire composition as well as I could.

Right at the end of my break, I was fortunate enough to take a 3-day Still Life workshop with Sarah Lamb. It’s my second attempt at a still life, as I’ve been working mostly from the figure. One of the most difficult things for me was to attempt to achieve a finished painting in 3 days since I am used to longer poses. It was great to push myself to paint at this speed, draw with a paint brush and approach things from a more mass-oriented way rather than linear. It exercised different muscles, so to speak and I walked away feeling a lot more confident with the paint brush. Sarah Lamb was a wonderful teacher and her still life paintings are beautiful — well-drawn, painterly while still capturing the subtlety in her subject matter.

I learned a lot about composition in regards to setting up objects for a still life (which, in my opinion, is much harder than it looks and is nothing like setting up the figure). We also discussed cropping, Ted Seth Jacobs, field effect, materials and color. We started with a poster study, moved on to an quick drawing/underpainting and pushed it to a finished painting as much as we could in the three days. This is how far I got in the painting. The glare makes parts of the painting a little difficult to see in my photo, but alas…

Still Life with Gourd

I start a 4-day portrait painting class with Kate Lehman tomorrow and beginning this Friday I’m on my own upstate where I’ll have space and quiet for 2 months (well, and freelance deadlines). I’ll also be back to posting regularly. Hope everyone had a great 4th of July celebration!