Art Tip #115

Do you think while you mix color?

The next few posts are going to hopefully get you to think & evaluate more about how you approach color mixing.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself.  I will be breaking these questions down into individual posts as we go along.  Just the tip of the iceberg.

1. Do you premix the majority of your palette?  Premixing helps you harmonize your painting.  Having the entire color scheme mixed next to each other allows you to see the spectrum of values, hues & saturation.   It also weeds out any "Screaming Mimi" colors that don't work before they hit the canvas.  This will help keep your painting "fresh" because you aren't constantly scrapping & remixing colors.                                                                                                      

2.  Do you have temperature variety in your palette.  Ex. If you are painting a pomegranate, did you just mix a range of light, halftone & dark reds or did you think about shifting the temperature & saturation of the reds as well?      

3.  Do you think about the saturation of colors?  Putting the purest of color in your focal point will work but if what's around it is just as saturated doesn't that dilute the focal point?            

4.  Do you mix colors that will be next to each other on the canvas?  I tend to mix color from my focal point out.  Mix colors that lie next to each other in order to judge value, temperature & saturation.

5.  Do you mix with a color in mind?  A student recently asked me how to mix Cerulean Blue.  I said I didn't have a clue.  I don't mix to a particular "color name".  My goal to mix the correct color for a specific spot in a painting.  I never think "Oh, I need Cerulean Blue" there.  Instead, I'm thinking that the color needs to be more warm or cool or more saturated or less or needs to shift in value.  Keep tube colors out of your head, let what's next to the color dictate what direction you go.

If you were to watch me mix color or paint, you'd think I was just letting the paint flow without a care in the world.  Reality is that my brain is going full speed.  I constantly have a running list of questions.  Not thinking is the worst thing for me.  It gets me in trouble every time.  While some of it is intuitive that comes from years of building my fundamentals but it doesn't allow me to turn my brain off.  So grab your palette knife & start mixing but bring your brain along for the ride.

Art Tip #112

Breaking Down Florals

I'm often asked how do you paint flowers without indicating every petal.  It starts with the basic shape, as with anything you paint.  As you see in the photo below, with the blue flowers, I painted the darkest blue first in a general rectangular shape.  The white flowers were circular & blocked in a half-tone greyed bluish purple.  Side note:  I can paint but evidently drawing on a painting is not my best skill.

I work from dark (transparent) to light which enables me to lay the lights on top with a minimum number of strokes.  I always try to create form by painting from the outside in (see below).  Defining my shapes from the background allows me to keep from getting too detailed. Also, leaving a little of my underpainting showing thru helps balance the need to over define. The leaves are added at the mid-point, in half-tones and are there to support the flowers not overpower them.

The last strokes are the lights (which are opaque & heavier paint).  If you look closely you will see that my lightest lights are the smallest portion of the flowers.  Without the darks & half-tones, the lights will appear flat.  Students are always so anxious to place the highlight on an object without realizing that what's underneath the highlight is more vital to creating form that one light stroke.  

Art Tip #110

Painting from Life

For the first few years of learning to paint, I mostly worked from photos.  I struggled to understand values, color & wanted to paint every little nuance.  Photos compress values, color shifts and capture everything.  

For the next 3 years, I painted tons of still life.  I came to see values better, temperature & plane shifts.  The photo of a lemon doesn't compare to an actual lemon.  It was like apples & oranges (sorry, bad pun). It was easier to see the temperature shifts as well as the values of the objects that brought them form & dimension. My paintings came to life.  In other words, painting from life taught me to "see" as artist.  

I have always had my students paint still life.  It's usually a split of 1/4 are excited & 3/4's were looking for something to hit me with or were shouting that they hated painting flowers/fruit as they tried to escape out the door.  I set up a still life and have students stand over it, look into the shadows & have them describe the colors within.  I'd then take a photo of the still life.  In the photo, they no longer saw colorful shadows or temperature shifts in the objects.  EYE OPENING MOMENT!

Still life can be anything.   Gardening tools, your daughter's red boots, your decorative soap dispenser or a piece of lingerie.  All you need is something that you find interesting to paint & a good light source.   So go grab a couple of colorful spools of thread, a piece of fabric & go paint.  You'll be a better artist for it.  I promise!

Art Tip #109

In the Green

                

          

One of the most common areas of difficulty for beginning & intermediate students is mixing believable greens.  Greens that will harmonize & not look like you squeezed the color "straight out of the tube".  Last week I talked about making my own dark/black.  That dark is the basis for all my greens which I add...can you guess?  My favorite Indian Yellow.  This gives me a dark, fairly transparent mossy green that is the "mother color" of all my greens.

I then add Viridian or more Ultramarine Blue for a "cooler" version of the mossy (warmer) green.  I will occasionally add Phthalo Blue if I really need to push the color.   I try to lighten my colors with different tints of yellows, purples, greys...just about any color but rarely do I add pure white.  While white will lighten & cool, it also makes colors chalky.  

You can see from above that while I start with a desaturated green, I'm able to make beautiful saturated colors with a variety of temperature shifts.  Harmonizing my greens happens because they all have a little bit of that mother color mixture in them.  

It is but a very small sampling of green mixes.  This way of mixing greens & having a limited palette gave me the confidence to mix any color.  What better way to start your day at the easel already knowing that your palette will be harmony each & every time.

Art Tip #103

UGLY DOG

Despite the name, I think it's the best brush cleaner around.  I've revived 6 year old, dried out paint brushes (the kind that could kill someone) back to almost new.   For my really bad brushes, I coat the bristles & let them sit for a day or two (occasionally massaging the soap into the bristles).  You'll know when it's done it's job, the bristles will be pliable.  Just rinse really well, pat dry & then add a little oil back to the brush.  I've saved so many brushes.   It's been harder to find in the art stores but here's a link to purchase.  

 Don't you have a container of old, paint laden brushes sitting around your studio that you would love to use again?