Marsh Grass

Grass is never easy to paint, at least not for me. I don't do many landscapes for that simple reason. Most people think that painting people is the most challenging and difficult. But the elements of a landscape cause me more grief than flesh and fabric. Grass doesn't grow in a mass, it grows one blade at a time. And yet our eye doesn't see every individual blade. As a painter, I strive to portray what we see, not necessarily what is. Grass also doesn't grow evenly. The individual blades grow in clumps, on uneven ground, and at different rates. Portraying all of this requires layer after layer of painting and working and reworking the canvas. Challenging, yet satisfying. Hakuna Matata. 

Misty Silhouettes

There are different ways to create the illusion of depth in a painting. One of the techniques in an artist's arsenal is called "atmospheric perspective". If you've ever noticed the mountains in the distance, you may have realized that each range of mountains is a different shade of bluish purple. The earth's atmosphere actually has color. The farther something is in the distance, the more atmospheric color there is between us and the object. That coloring affects the details we can see, and the coloring. So, as an artist, I put more blue into the color of things that are farther away. Additionally, I add fewer details. 

When we add mist to the mix, that technique is doubled. Now, however, the atmosphere isn't necessarily more blue, but rather more grey. On a bright sunny day the figures would have color, light, shadows, and details. But on this misty day, they are simply silhouettes in the distance.

Blocking In

Sometimes when I approach a painting I work one area at a time, finishing some details before moving on to the next area. While I did do some detail work in the background trees, I am mostly blocking in all of the basic shapes before I move forward on this piece. There will be a lot of detail work and getting the background correct is paramount. I don't want to put hours into detail work to find that I messed up a major shape. So for this piece, I'm working large to small, fine tuning as I go. 

Applying with the Palette Knife

I chose this image to illustrate something simple but effective. When there is a lot of canvas to cover, getting the paint worked into the fibers of the canvas can be tedious and even difficult. I have discovered that using a palette knife to cover large areas of canvas works well. It covers the area quickly, pushes the paint into the fibers, and makes it easy to spread it to the remaining areas with much less effort. 

Magic

There is a concept in art called the Gestalt Theory, which basically says, "we see the whole before we see the individual parts that make up that whole".  It is a concept that continues to fascinate me. Looking close up at the brush strokes on the cape it makes no sense. It's simply a bunch of lines. But scanning back, those lines come together to not only create the shape of the cape, but also the movement as it folds in and out, and the texture of the straw. How magical is that?

White on White

One of my major Ah-Ha moments as a painter was when I realized that white is never really white. After painting Santa's hair and hat I've decided that all my students should paint a Santa. There are at least 101 shades (hues) of white. When we look at clouds we tend think "white". But next time you see a cloud, really look. How many different shades are there? How much of it is really even white? And so it was today with Santa. A few strokes of straight white to set off the highlights. But most of it is one of several different hues.

Paint By Number

I had a friend ask what my process looks like. I was thinking that I was sharing that since I post at each stopping point along the way. But today I realized that I've only been sharing the stopping points, and not the points in between. So here is what I call the paint-by-number stage. I spent years watching Bob Ross paint happy little trees that just magically appeared on the canvas. When I started painting I thought it would be like that. While I still have fond memories of watching those happy little trees, there is a big disservice to the art business in those shows. It just doesn't happen like that. I could spend an entire post explain all the reasons why, but I'll move on. Every artist has their own approach. For me, I find the lights and the darks and lay them in all around the figure. Sometimes it's only in a single area, like the lips. Other times it's a bigger area like here, the entire face. And then I blend it to a soft stage like this... 

And then I do it again and again. I call this layering. Each time I repeat the process I see lights I didn't see before. I see darks that are darker. I see shapes that are not quite right. So I paint by number again and soften again until suddenly, there she is. So tune in again tomorrow and we'll see if we got there!

Getting Your Feet Wet

My little beach boy finally got his feet wet. This was a fun day of painting. I love how the shorts came out. I love painting fabric. It was as amazing this time as the first time I painted fabric. It took just three strokes of bright red and he had folds in his shorts that defined what his legs were doing. Crazy how that happens. When I learned that painting flesh was just like painting fabric, I was on my way to figure painting. Flesh is simply live fabric that lays over muscle and bone. It reacts the same way as fabric over a solid structure. So cool. I love my work!

Lights and Darks

When starting a face I first try to find the areas of highlight (lights) and shadow (darks) that define the plane changes on the face. It's tempting to go into great detail on one facial feature, like an eye, but it's better in the end to make sure all the general areas are correct first. I've made the mistake before of perfecting an eye and then realizing I painted it too high or too low or too far to the right or left and having to repaint it. Lesson learned...