Monday, March 31, 2014

6 Tips for Color Mixing [feedly]

  

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6 Tips for Color Mixing
// Artist Daily

An eloquent and unexpected use of color is often what divides beginning painters like me from the greats. But there are several basic rules of thumb that we can build on to propel ourselves and our paintings onto higher, more sophisticated ground, artistically speaking. With practice and attention, one of the most challenging aspects of painting--selecting and mixing colors--can become a rewarding one too.

The Ninth Wave by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, oil painting, 1850.

The Ninth Wave by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, oil painting, 1850.
Adapted from an article by Stephen Doherty.

1. Start painting with just one or two colors so you understand how they differ in opacity, temperature, and tinting strength. Most instructors recommend their students start painting with a limited palette of colors so that they become familiar with those before tackling 20 to 30 more tube colors. The experience helps us remember whether the colors are warm or cool, transparent or opaque, slow drying or fast drying, etc.

2. Use a palette of colors recommended in a magazine article, website, book, or DVD. Many art-instruction articles list the specific colors the featured artist works with; most art instruction books and DVDs offer similar information, and a few paint manufactures and retailers also offer recommendations and instruction on their websites. Sometimes the lists seem to duplicate each other, but if you look carefully you'll note that some artists depend heavily on earth colors, whereas others eliminate them from their palettes. There are very specific reasons why one artist will use titanium white and another will rely on lead white; and why a plein air painter chooses to use heavier, more opaque colors when painting outdoors and a completely different palette in the studio. You may find it helpful to use what is already working for another artist before you buy expensive paints.

3. Intermix colors to achieve harmony. Many painters pre-mix one or two colors that will dominate their pictures, and then they adjust those colors to paint smaller shapes, knowing that this is more apt to be a harmonious relationship between the various combinations. For example, they might prepare a midvalue flesh tone and then make portions of it lighter, darker, warmer, or cooler as they develop a portrait. Similarly, they might mix one dominant color to paint the largest area of a river or stream, then intermix other colors to enrich the representation of the water.

4. Pre-mix all the basic colors you'll need. Consider pre-mixing a full range of colors and values. Many artists feel strongly that they can work faster and more accurately if they pre-mix a full palette of colors before beginning to paint on canvas. This is especially the case with portrait painters who know their clients will only give them a limited amount of time to paint, but it is equally true of landscape and still life painters who work from life and want to be fully prepared to make the best use of their time.

5. Note the difference between mixing colors on a palette and on the surface of the painting. It is generally true that colors become more dull and muddy if they are overworked on the surface of a painting, so most artists try to mix the correct color and value on their palette and apply it directly to the paper or canvas in one stroke. However, there are times when it does make sense to blend fresh strokes of paint into the wet surface of the developing painting to achieve greater subtlety and harmony. The key is to recognize the differences between mixtures created on the palette and those blended into the wet surface of the painting and to use that knowledge in appropriate ways.

6. Write down the names of the tube colors that prove to be effective. Some artists make a point of writing down the color combinations they've used so they can repeat them. This is especially true if one is doing sketches that might become the basis of large studio paintings.

As you continue on your path of artistry, keep these simple ideas in mind as a way to strengthen your confidence with color, or use them as an exercise in refreshing your color palette if you feel it is getting stale. And if you are interested in the color possibilities in landscape painting, consider Dramatic Color in the Landscape as a resource that could assist you along the way. Enjoy!


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Graphite drawings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art [feedly]

  

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Graphite drawings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
// lines and colors

Graphite drawings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Samuel Prout, Samuel Amsler, Carlo Ferrario, Charles R. Knight, William Trost Richards,  Alexandre Denis Abel de Pujol, John Singer Sargent
Today, March 30, is — we are told — "National Pencil Day", marking the advent of a patent on the pencil with an attached eraser.

I'll put aside the fact that this hardly represents the most significant event in the history of the pencil, and the inaccuracy of the linked WN article about Lipman creating the wooden pencil (he did not — see my post on the history of Pencils); and I'll even overlook the likelihood that this is merely a marketing ploy on the part of pencil manufacturers, and instead use it as an excuse to celebrate pencil drawing, with a few nice examples from history.

To do that, I had to go no further than the mind-bogglingly deep catalogue of drawings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from which I've selected a few done in graphite.

Should you choose to do the same, here is a link to a search of the online collections for works marked with the tag "graphite".

This will turn up many watercolors, ink and wash and other drawings in which graphite was incorporated or used as a start, but there are enough actual graphite drawings to keep an interested pencil drawing aficionado occupied for hours. Most of them are available in high-resolution versions.

This tiny selection of pencil drawings is merely (if you'll excuse the expression) scratching the surface — so I'll tack on a Time Sink Warning.

Images above, with details: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Samuel Prout, Samuel Amsler, Carlo Ferrario, Charles R. Knight, William Trost Richards, Alexandre Denis Abel de Pujol, John Singer Sargent.


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How to Clean Out a Brush [feedly]

  

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How to Clean Out a Brush
// Gurney Journey

Good brush care can extend the life of an oil painting brush tenfold, and save you hundreds of dollars in the long run.



In this two minute video, William Whitaker demonstrates how he cleans out an oil-painting brush.

1. Dip brush in odorless mineral spirits and wipe out solids in shop towel.
2. Wash out the brush in soap and water.
3. Using another brush, work up a lather of brush-washing soap in the palm of your hand.
4. Grasp the tips of the bristles and wiggle the lather into the bristles and work it into the area where the bristles meet the ferrule.
5. Add brush conditioner to restore the oils into the bristles, as soap and mineral spirits alone will dry out the brush.
6. Gently point the brush before putting it away.

There's a variety of brush cleaning soaps available. Some of the formulations have soap and conditioner together. If I've forgotten one that you like, let me know in the comments, and I'll add it in:
Da Vinci Brush Cleaning Soap
Trekell Coconut Oil Soap for watercolor

Don't miss the video of Bob Ross "beating the devil" out of his brush, where he whacks the odorless thinner out the brush on his easel, covering the studio with paint. "That's where you take out your hostilities and frustrations," he says. (Thanks, Daniel)

The Whitaker video is one of dozens of selected artist demo videos recently curated by the Art Renewal Center.


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Sunday, March 30, 2014

The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free [feedly]

  

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The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free
// lines and colors

J.M.W. Turner, The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus
The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free is an exhibition at the Tate Britain in London, that explores the later, sometimes controversial, work of brilliant British painter J.M.W. Turner.

Some of the work was controversial in Turner's experimental approach to composition, rendering, and portrayal of light, notably the further dissolution of form into light and color, culminating in a approach sometimes called his "vortex technique". Even critics who had been staunch supporters of Turner prior to his late career, like John Ruskin, were convinced that Turner had basically lost it.

That impression has persisted in history books, but the new exhibition aims to correct that impression.

There is a brief set of slides on the Tate's site with some preview images, that have larger versions when clicked on. You can also click through to the dedicated page for some of the pieces in the Tate's permanent collection, and you may find larger versions of others elsewhere; notably, the remarkable Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus (above, top, with detail) that is available in high resolution on the Google Art Project and Wikimedia Commons.

The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free will be on display at the Tate until 25 January 2015, it then travels to the U.S. for venues in San Francisco and Los Angeles.


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Eye Candy for Today: David double portrait [feedly]

  

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Eye Candy for Today: David double portrait
// lines and colors

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife, Jacques Louis David
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife, Jacques Louis David

David's portrait of the famous French chemist and his wife, Marie Lavoiser, née Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze, includes some of Antoine-Laurent Lavoiser's experimental equipment.

Marie Lavoiser was a student of David's, and illustrated treatises on her husband's experiments with extensive, detailed drawings of his scientific equipment.


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A simple DIY drying rack for plein air panels and small paintings [feedly]

  

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A simple DIY drying rack for plein air panels and small paintings
// lines and colors

A simple DIY drying rack for plein air panels and small paintings
One of the simultaneously good and difficult things about oil paint is that it dries slowly. Storing oil paintings as they dry is always something of an issue. Plein air painters, in particular, who often produce a lot of small paintings in a relatively short time frame, are faced with the question of how to arrange their panels as they dry.

I came across a nicely done and simple-to-construct plan for a DIY drying rack by plein air painter Matthew Lee, which he was kind enough to share with the community on Wet Canvas.

In his version, Lee uses pegboard and dowels to make racks that fit within the shelves of a store-bought metal shelving unit, dividing the space into panel holders of varying heights on four shelves.

In my case, I used his idea to make a more modest, single, free-standing rack just for small panels, at a size that would fit onto a bookshelf in my small studio space.

He used pegboard and 1/4″ dowels, which in his case seemed to fit well through the pegboard. I assume the pegboard I got had slightly different diameter holes, as I found 1/4″ dowels a tight fit.

I decided to use that to advantage, and make 1/4″ dowels, tightly wedged into the pegboard holes at the corners and middle, hold the structure together; and 1/8″ dowels, which slipped easily through the holes, to make the majority of the uprights.

My original sheet of pegboard was 24×48″, from which I had Home Depot cut one 8″ wide strip. (They won't actually cut 8″ wide boards or strips, but they could make one 16″ wide cut off the 24″ wide original, leaving me an 8″ strip, and saving me the trouble of cutting the pegboard lengthwise.) I then cut that 8×48″ strip in half, giving me two pieces of pegboard 8″x24″.

The largest panels I need to dry in quantity are 6×8″, so I cut my dowels to allow about 8″ clearance between the top and bottom sheets of pegboard, leaving adequate room for the 6″ height of the panels. I cut the dowels with a miter saw; the miter box made it easy to hold them while cutting.

I used my tight-fitting 1/4″ dowels at the corners and in the middle, spaced one hole in from the edge, to hold the pegboard sheets apart. They fit tightly enough to provide just enough structural rigidity to hold the pegboard in place, (Your milage may vary, and gluing might be in order for pegboard and dowels that don't fit that tight.)

My loose-fitting 1/8″ dowels were cut longer and just slipped through the top and slotted in the matching holes in the bottom piece of pegboard, which is mounted on a piece of 1×8 shelving lumber. I spaced them more closely so the panels would rest in them with space at the ends and be easy to grab.

As you can see to the left in the middle photos, I've tried other kinds of racks to hold panels — in this case, wire racks for file folders from an office supply store — but they tend to be spaced too far apart for panels that are 8″ wide, which wind up just tilted into them instead of resting on both sides of the rack.

The DIY rack holds more, and is sized to fit the panels.

My apologies if the clamps for lights above and in front of the rack provide any confusion in the photos, they are unrelated to the drying rack. The rack as you see it in the first photo is complete.

See the link to Matthew Lee's original article below.


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Saturday, March 29, 2014

Seven paintings of houses and towns by Egon Schiele [feedly]



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Renato Muccillo [feedly]

  

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Renato Muccillo
// lines and colors

Renato Muccillo
The first thing that struck me about the paintings of Canadian artist Renato Muccillo was his wonderfully subtle sense of value, as well as the range of expression he achieves with an understated use of color.

Though some of his compositions are dramatically lit, with dynamic cloud formations portrayed in a full range of values, most are subdued, with their value contrasts and color range carefully controlled.

Many of his works are scenes in which still, reflective water evokes a feeling of quiet and contemplation, sometimes with a simplicity that recalls the 19th century Luminists. He employs atmospheric perspective to give some of this works distinct planes of depth, and in others revels in the textures of his subjects, the soft edges of which are suggestionve of Tonalists like Inness.

In addition to the range of value relationships, there is an interesting range of scale at which he works. Though some of his studio pieces are fairly large, perhaps 30×30 inches (76x76cm), others are much smaller than they may first appear, attesting to Muccillo's ability to use suggestion, and let your eye fill in detail. The fours paintings above, bottom, are less then 8 inches (20cm) wide, the bottommost only 3×3 inches (8x8cm).

You will find on his website galleries of new works and archives, and one of miniatures. You can find additional work on the websites of Howard Mandville Galleries (also here), and White Rock Gallery. The latter has a short documentary video on the artist and his techniques. There is also an article about Muccillo on Southwest Art.


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Controlled Watercolor Portrait [feedly]

  

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Controlled Watercolor Portrait
// Gurney Journey


Here's an example of a well controlled watercolor portrait from 1874 by Nikolai Yaroshenko. The portrait shows his friend and fellow artist Ivan Kramskoi.

A watercolor like this would begin with a careful pencil line outline drawing on fairly smooth paper or board. You can see the untouched pencil drawing of the leg in the lower part of the picture. Following that would be light, neutral washes of watercolor, such as what you see on the hand and on the flipped-back pages of Kramskoi's book. 

He tested one of his green mixtures on the right side of the picture. It's not a bad idea to have a test-swatch section of the sketch where you can fool around with the brush and try things out.

Once the big areas are lightly covered, and still using a big brush, Kramskoi adds smaller shapes to define the folds of the sleeve, varying the colors as he goes. The pencil drawing probably didn't define these folds in much detail, so he's finding them with the brush.

Yaroshenko probably spent three quarters of his time on the face, and I would guess this study took about two to three hours in all. To get the very controlled soft transitions, he might have painted some passages where he lightly wet the surface and dropped in colors a little at a time. 

He might have lifted out areas that got too dark. Lifting out means wetting already painted surfaces and dabbing out some of the pigment with a brush, sponge or rag. 

But you have to watch out with these techniques, because applications of water over painted passages can easily mess them up. It's like dancing on eggshells.

I can't tell from this repro whether he used any gouache, but I would guess probably not. The white stripes in the tie and the shirt seem to be white areas in the paper left untouched.

In the '70s when I was becoming an artist, everyone wanted to paint watercolor "bold and free." But from my perspective, boldness and freedom alone don't have much value without the grounding of deliberate consideration and careful observation. 

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Sunday, March 9, 2014

Eytan Zana [feedly]




Eytan Zana
// lines and colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics, concept art and other visual arts

Eytan Zana
Eytan Zana is an illustrator and concept artist working in both the gaming and film industries. He has worked on titles like The Last Of Us and Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception.

Beyond that, I know little, as his blog doesn't give a great deal of background information. It does, however, have examples of his wonderfully atmospheric and surprisingly painterly images, including some digital plein air.

There also isn't any specific information about his process, but he has done a workshop for Massive Black for which he has provided downloadable layered PSD files for the two images in this post.

Zana also has prints available on society6.

[Via Concept Art World]



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N. C. Wyeth ~ The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne ~ 1918 Scribner's Edition [feedly]




N. C. Wyeth ~ The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne ~ 1918 Scribner's Edition
// The Golden Age





































































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