You Are in Control of Your Painting's Success!

    You are in control of your painting's success! Really! How can you go wrong? Well, first of all, remember if you do go wrong, know it, and proceed anyway. Why? Because once you learn to analyse where you went wrong, then finishing is how you learn to improve. How can you know how to go right when you went wrong? To give you the most helpful instruction you can receive, the instruction that can make you the excellent painter you want to be, know this: No amount of practice makes perfect!! You need to practice the "right" things otherwise you are spinning your wheels, stuck, instead of traveling down the road to success. Corny I know, but doing things by rote is the best way to ingrain the procedure that will get you the best results every time you paint. To become proficient at painting and to paint successful paintings every time you paint, you have to be very specific in your decision making process in order to see the results you want. And that's the key. You have to know the specific details of what you want before you can get it.

     On July 31, 2013, I posted the six questions you need to ask and decide in order to produce consistently good paintings Look for it in the archives..Once you decide these six elements of your painting, it puts you in control.

     

      After students receive very specific instructions from me on how to plan their paintings, many students do not realize they are to go through this process every time they paint. Doing thumbnails of each answer to questions one through six is the rote learning process that teaches composition and design, concept and execution, so you can assimilate all the nitty gritty treasures used by seasoned, successful painters. You can understand the theory and instructions I provide as solutions to the questions "What do I do next and how do I paint it?"  Understand what each question, 1-6, means, ask it, answer it, thumbnail it, every time, until it is second nature to guide yourself with it and then and only then will you know when, where, and how to utilize the knowledge which can turn you into a skilled painter. Learning what line, form, values, temperature, color scheme, and chroma are, is necessary to handling the myriad of choices you make with every brush stroke. It helps you visualize, color, mood, where the light goes, what value to choose, what color to mix, and how to create integrity that locks all the elements of your painting together, so everything works in your painting. 

       If you want to be a good painter, why would you waste countless destructive hours instilling bad habits that promise bad results, and unhappiness, all because you want to skip answering these six questions and want to skip doing thumbnails, so you can get to the fun part of painting. What's so fun about unhappiness and disappointment? Do it right and make these six decisions, do the thumbnails, and planning becomes the fuel that drives your enthusiasm into painting harmoniously "in the zone", a euphoric place where you have all the answers to produce a great painting, and you do. Happiness is the process and the resulting painting itself,( which came into being because you were in control.of it's success). So, where's your plan? 

The Reprimand

      As to learning the rules, here is the reprimand:

       Even those artists that broke away from the pack to form their own approach to painting, which in turn started a whole new movement and style of painting, were trained artists, and learned the rules. It was the application of the rules in a new manner that set them apart. But, it was the rules that made their paintings work. Even Jackson Pollack knew and used the rules to be "spontaneous". Certainly it can be mind-boggling to be flooded with too many rules all at once. It takes time to layer and absorb the matrix of design and color, accuracy and placement. But art is more than just a feeling, a nuance. It is the ability to say something evocative with a brush. And if you want it to say more than P U, foundation is necessary to build on in order to depart from and stand alone and be good at what you do. So, here are the rules really necessary to enjoy painting and what you have painted. Doing the following is the bare minimum to being happy with your paintings, unless you are simply satisfied with copying.

     Copying photos, copying paintings, the planning is already done for you. Good photos already have everything decided. But if you further understand why they are good in respect to line, value, form, color scheme, chroma, and temperature, you can maintain quality and improve on it. So if pleasure painting is what you seek, what's more pleasurable than being successful? Implementing and understanding this basic process (1-4  listed below) will turn on the mental mechanism within you that will enable you to learn ways to always grow as an artist.  If you follow the rules below, minimally you will be successful now and immediately.

Rules, rules, rules! Here's the bare minimum:

1. Do thumbnails for all your paintings until you are good enough to do them in your head.  That means, good enough to do 3 plans in your head, select and reject, remember your concept and follow it through to the end of your painting.

2.  Learn to move color and light, be aware of it in your planning stage, before you start painting. 

3. Keep your values reduced to under 6 (that includes white) and bump them up or down to make them work!

4. After you plan, please, check yourself, check your placement, check your thumbnails. When you deviate, you learn very little except how to never achieve your goal. If something else occurs to you along the way, don't proceed with your new idea. In other words, if it departs from the line, value, form, chroma, temperature, color scheme you have overall already attended to in your plan: STOP DON'T DO IT, GO BACK TO YOUR THUMBNAILS AND YOUR ORIGINAL PLAN.  If your new idea enhances what you have planned, and maintains it, proceed and finish. Otherwise finish your painting as originally planned, then paint your subject again with your new idea developed into a new plan. You will have 2 great paintings. One is always better, but that is subjective, and an argument for which is which. When you do it over under a new plan and have finished the first plan, you learn how the rules are working!

     You don't have to be a serious painter to plan. You just have to be someone that hopes for something you like when you are done; someone, who wants to enjoy painting and the results. Planning is the only thing that separates you from me, and me and you  from any really great artist.

     For me, I have an irrational driving force within that wants to share the joy of painting, that means it is important to me that you are successful, which means sharing the rules and you learning rules well enough to follow them. There is absolutely no way you can turn out a poor painting if you do this! Success feels great and you will love painting. You'll be sucked into timeless energy as you paint and discover the awe of painting in the zone. You are going to be more than pleased: you'll be happy and regenerated, ready to do it again. Rules. Are you ready?
   If I'm soft in describing or demonstrating process please use the comments box, or email me at ssprigggallery@yahoo.com so I can help and be more clear wherein I have not been successfully teaching you how to plan your painting. There are many mechanisms by which we learn and sometimes I just need to reassert it differently, then rote learning is the key. Do it and do it and then you've got it forever. Take a moment to review July 30, 2013 " How to critique your own work". It explains this minimal process you should always do before you paint.

Demonstration at Loma Linda Cultural Art Association

                                             

                                          Susan Sprigg  Floral Demonstration

From a workshop on differentiating 1 color.

"How to Produce 

Successful Paintings Every Time!"

Loma Linda Senior Center, Loma Linda,  CA

Barton Road and Loma Linda Drive  (by the fire station)

September 8, 2013 - 2:00 to 4:00 P.M.

About the Artist: 

Susan Sprigg entered Commercial Art freelancing newspaper, and magazine advertisement art at 26 in the late 70's doing artwork for her regular client base illustrating shoes, clothing, portraiture, furniture, architectural housing renderings and the like. She also did album and book covers and illustration. She was the illustrator for Manning Silver Design, a fabulous and very exclusive clothing designer in Beverly Hills.  She then became Art Director in the 80's for a major national manufacturer (before the internet and it was so easy to be recognized nationally) COAST, where she designed and sculpted prototype figurines and other products for Hong Kong manufacture and U.S. and international sale. As art director she was head of Advertising and the annual 132 page catalog of merchandise, so she arranged for models, was responsible for concept and design, oversaw the photo shoots, and launched ad campaigns at a time of typesetters, and paste up and doing everything manually or by extremely expensive color process. Correcting color manually, prescribing the inks used and the percentages of change was a wonderful education in itself, in learning to see color, tweak it and learning how chroma sets mood and can elevate the subject matter.

    In 2002, Susan entered the world of fine art, and oil painting, after working in a huge variety of mediums for years. She is know for her portraiture, roses, and her ability to instruct. She now instructs privately and publicly, sells her paintings on the internet and  her daily Art in Ebay auctions under the headings Daily Paintings, Direct from the Artist,  and Susan Sprigg oil paintings. 

    

  You are also invited to subscribe to Susan Sprigg's blog at http://susanspriggdailyartweekly.blogspot.com  for free instruction, class notes and lectures, painting critiques and more. She also has just started to post her auctions and latest work for sale. Please join, this blog too!  http://susanspriggpaintings.blogspot.com

Understanding the Nuance of Painting

      An email conversation with a contemporary of mine has stimulated me to  pass on some of it's content to those of you who desire to reach your full potential as artists. Not everyone is thusly driven. And even though this may show you another side of me and my aggressive side of teaching, I think some of today's content can be beneficial if you can look past my reprimanding manner.

        Rules. Sometimes it may seem like there are too many rules. A clinical approach to painting and  creating any kind of art may be a huge turn off. And as I have shared with many of you before, in my youth I was very puffed up and impressed with my own ability. But I learned that the devil was in the details and those details would be overlooked if I didn't give into the fact that I wasn't above learning procedure and needing to apply rules in order to make a  successful original piece of artwork on my own. I was great at copying but terrible at my own composition. I would do the work and always crop down. I couldn't see it until the work was done. I wasted time , material and money, cropping and remounting work in the beginning of my art career.

   

       Youth told me two out of four efforts wasn't bad having to crop. But as soon as I gave into planning, learning composition and as many rules as I could, it was a shortcut to 100% success without timely cropping and remounting.

      Teaching, I see so many artists not take the time to understand composition and  proper use of thumbnails. They commit to working diligently on  a poorly planned painting that needs lots of fixing that will take twice the time and produce 1/2 the product potential. This all happens because they did not take even fifteen minutes to do thumbnails and answer six basic aspects of the painting they were about to produce. What's my line, color scheme, chroma, values, temperature, and form, are the basics. Mastering the basics first is the only way to understand the nuance of painting. It is the magic you see when a seasoned artist paints with mastery. They don't skip this part!  They have done the planning so many times that they refine planning to in their head or they examine their subject prior to setting up and plan in advance, or they use one of the many mental templates of design they have been successful with in their past, BUT THEY NEVER SKIP THUMBNAIL PLANNING! Minimally it is done in their visual mind. So take time to plan and learn so the FUN can be in the details instead of dread and dissatisfaction and hardship.

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The Andrew Loomas Color Wheel and 3,2,1 Light Meets 1, 2,3 Shadow!

         My foundation as a commercial artist in advertising, and being an art director prepared me for painting fine art by familiarizing me with color formula and how to render form through process. Seeing color was easy for me, reproducing it, playing with it became easy too. I owe it to learning 4 color process, doing manual color separations, and 4 color camera separations and color correcting them manually. Oil Painter and Colorist Kevin McPherson promotes a simple palette of primaries plus white to learn oil painting and to plein air paint.  I am encouraging you to understand how light and shadow functions in printing the same as it does it in painting as a primer to painting form. 

cyan (blue or C)       Magenta (M)               Yellow (Y)                  Black (K)       

        We used the Andrew Loomas Color Wheel in Commercial Art because we used the 4 color printing process: cyan (blue), magenta, yellow, and black or CMYK.

         This particular color wheel was superbly designed to show 10 values for each primary and secondary on the wheel, from white to black, with 4 tints and 4 tones. I have shared this Andrew Loomas color wheel with you because it explains tint and tone, halftones, the influence of black on a color. (Remember I most frequently use a mixture of burnt umber and ultramarine blue which makes a black, and I produce the same results as this wheel). It will help you learn to create dimensionality, and help you learn how to paint  believable shadow. 

       Andrew Loomas shows us how an incremental addition of white moves us to white, and the color you get adding an incremental amount of black moves the color to complete representation of absence of light. If you added one more outer ring on this wheel it would be black in every position of the outer ring.

        We reproduced almost all colors with these 4 inks. The pure ink color for each primary is found on either side of the line dividing tint from tone.  The tint side is pure, the tone side has a percentage of black added making it a tone. Both tone and tints are called halftones. And halftones are created by lessening the degree of color saturation and by adding black to the mix to create form. We revealed form with these 4 colors in dots. dpi, or dots per square inch, which meant the highest concentration of any of the 4 colors would fill a square inch with solid color by printing that many dots to create maximum saturation. 

        The number and size of dots influenced the sharpness of the detail in that printed image. The less dots printed of the total dpi, the less intense the color since the unprinted dots equated to white  when printed on a white sheet or page of paper. We also thought in tone, tint and halftone. Tint meant how close the dots were together in the absence of black. Tone meant how close the dots were printed together with the addition of black dots. In painting, currently, it is popular to drop the notion of tint and refer to all gradations as tone.  But try to think of "tone" as an abbreviation for halftone instead. If you can train yourself to think in terms of tint halftones and tone halftones and memorize the order in which light meets shadow your ability to paint with take a big leap forward.

       Tint halftones are the family of light. Tone halftones are the family of shadow. In printing 4 color process, the absence of ink dots represents white. In printing, the family of light's most intensity of color is called the local color, is the total dpi being printed to make a solid color and for our purposes of understanding how form is revealed, is position #3 in the light halftone family.

       In 4 color process, the inks are transparent, so the colors change as the different inks are overprinted. It also matters which order the inks are printed. So yellow over blue produces a slightly different green than blue printed over yellow, and this is represented on this wheel. To mix oils by this chart you would just slightly increase one of the contributing 2 colors to acheive a similar result, since oil paint is opaque.

      Position #3 represents to us the strongest intensity in the family of light. As the color dots space out the color de-intensifies. This is the family of light's halftone or family-of-light order position 2. In the spacing of the dots, the color mixes with the appearance of white or non-printed space of the dpi to form a tint. Now as the color intensity lessens in the #2 light-family halftone order position, the room between dots is increased. It is in this position #2 of the halftone family, that we start to show reflected light, by adding adjacent color to the halftone, as dots continue to decrease. To show form, not only does the intensity of color decrease as the form's surface changes, moving away from the light source, but colors from the surrounding objects should be added  to the objects adjacent to one another, mating them, to reveal form by making light appear reflected on your surfaces. After doing this, we move to position #1 in the light family where, colors are neutralized and we are ready to add shadow. As color reduces and neutralizes, we reach the number one classification of order.

     

      Tint halftone (light family) 3-2-1, is (1) Local Color of an objects' highest intensity of color meets (2) diluted local color and diluted reflected color meets (3) diluted colors neutralized,(opposite colors added).Tint halftone (light family) 321 now meets 123 shadow family or shadow halftone. Remember although I'm explaining 4-color offset printing, the absence of dots equals white, and the dilution of color, as it applies to mixing paint to paint form. In other words, at the point of highest intensity of light on a surface we start with pure local color, move away from light as the angle of light changes from 90 degree angle of  light-to-surface, by adding white and reflected color. Then, the next step is to neutralize the faded intensity by adding opposite colors to the mix, and now we are ready to introduce shadow. 

       Shadow follows the 3-2-1 order of light with a 1-2-3 order of the shadow family where position #1 of light becomes neutralised color and changes to shadow family position #1 with the introduction of black. Next we have position #2 which is more reflected color in  an increasing quantity of black, and position 3 is Black in it's most dense representation of the darkest dark of that particular shadow. 

       A word about black: I have been insistent that we mix our black. The reason is to create color continuity in our paintings by decreasing or increasing intensities of the colors used to create black, warming and cooling the black and controlling black's severity. The mix we use to make black is made up of colors in our palette and it harmonized with the other colors we have mixed by having the same constituent parts, appearing elsewhere in our painting. Black is so powerful, it is difficult to ration your usage as a novice painter.  Lamp black or ivory black can quickly doom a novice's painting. So please don't close your mind to me or this color wheel based on me saying don't use black. We use black, only we mix it. So in your mind, substitute the black on this wheel with our mixed black. See the dividing line for the light family separating it from the shadow family. You can use this wheel to learn to tone and tint color, for reference until you teach yourself to warm up and cool off color, reflect color and neutralize color. Then there is pantone you can use for color formula too. 

        Pantone is a color chart system to identify the local color of an object. Each color on this chart gives a formula for the percentages of  the 4 inks to make this color. I liked using this pantone system because I was already familiar with it, and it taught me to see separate color in a conglomerate color. To me pigment is pigment when mixing color. Of course how that pigment is suspended or bound influences an artist when reaching a color solution, but I hold that the formulas translate. More about the ease of pantone later. Once you learn to see and translate color and understand tint, tone, light family and shadow family, you won't need color wheels, or color formulas for reference, unless you are duplicating, copying, or forging and precision is paramount.

Ready for the Next Leap in your painting Ability?

Familiarize Yourself with these Terms to Think and Paint in These Terms.

 Color: Without light, there is no color. Color is manifest by light shining on a surface. Light reflected on a surface is how we see form and color. Light reveals color. Color reveals form. The closer an object is to the light source the more intense the color of the object becomes.

Province of Light is all areas hit directly by light. Remember color is revealed by light. The more direct the light is that shines on a surface the more intense it's color becomes. The most intense area of color on an object or group of objects is at the point 90 degrees to it's the light source that is,not blocked by any objects. There is only one 90 degree point to the light source, color dilutes from that direct point and the result is the means by which we see form.

 

Province of Shadow is all areas not hit directly by light.   Shadow is neither form nor color.  Shadow is darkness.  Shadow is more or less black and opaque.  Light is obscured by an object and casts a shadow – more or less black and opaque.  The shadow is illuminated only by light reflected off the surrounding objects.  Therefore the surrounding object's colors are seen in the province of shadow.

Form or Shape:  By virtue of shadow all natural objects are revealed.  Objects without

shadow are a flat glare of light and color, but when the shadow appears the object takes

form.

 

Local Color is the color of the object without shadow.  Local color does not reveal an object's shape or form.  Only shadow can do that.

 

Hard Shadow:  If the edges of an object are sharp then the shadow's edge is acute (on the object itself). 

 

Soft Shadow:  If the edges of an object are rounded then the edges of the shadow are

softened (on the object itself).

 

Halftone is the change in local color as it becomes less influenced by light hitting the object surface at 90°.  It is an object's mid-value, more specifically, where light is diffused and meets with the shadow, and that which describes form and shape. Tones divide in two groups, into light halftones and shadow half tones.

 

Halftones belonging to the Province of Light are  halftones that carry an impression of

texture and color.  Paint them them brighter than they appear.

Halftones belonging to the Province of Shadow are Halftones that carry an impression of form and should be made much darker than they appear to be, in otherwords reduce the number of gradations of tone by painting fewer tones and making the tone darker.

Tint:  Local color. See our special color wheel by Andrew Loomas and examine the spectrum as it relates to light (white plus local color) and again as it relates to shadow Black plus local color.

 

Light Family is identified by texture, quality, or type of light and color. The order of appearance of light:

 

Highlight and local color                     Tint and reflection                 Neutralized Halftone.

        3                                                  2                                          1              
(increasing the mixture of white as it meets the shadow family meeting it's halftone, reflections and deeper shadow.)

 

Shadow Family is  identified by form and solidity. The order of appearance of shadow is from light to dark shadow:

 

Halftone                     Reflection                   Shadow

1                                  2                                  3

Classes for August 2013

Painting by Susan Sprigg

Please see class preview and details, (what you need for next class) by clicking this link: http://susanspriggdailyartweekly.blogspot.com/p/upcoming-classes.html
August 3, 2013 We will finish Sunflowers after an hour lesson on Roses.
August 9, 2013 Detailed lecture on light,Shadow and reflected light. We finish past work. Work on your choice of paintings or drawings.
August 16, 2013 Horse Demo and Special Color Wheel
August 23, 2013 Lecture on mediums and Varnishing
August  24, 2013 to be announced- Students' request
August  31, 2013 Trees
September we will relax to move at a more comfortable pace, painting.
September Events: Plein air painting
October: figure and portraiture
November: Classes to be discussed to fit holiday scheduled breaks.
 In the New Year we go through the color Schemes and Chroma paintings and study some contempory artists. And we have an art show!

Back Lesson 2: Color Mixing Formulas

Many of you have requested the first 4 lesson be posted on the blog, so here is lesson 2:

Mixing Paint from the Primaries!

Today, you start learning to see color in a different light. Learning to mix color begins to wake up your senses and creates a world of beauty and observation in the simplest things, and soon everything you see is color and wonderment.

First let’s talk about the primary colors, yellow, red, and blue.  You can mix a close proximity to any color using these 3 colors, and then tinting or toning the color with white or black to reach the desired color). Essentially you only need the three primaries plus white, because in this class, we make black from the three primaries.

Basic Color Formulas
These are 4 part formulas. Think of a Candy Bar and divide it in 4 parts.  This will give you a visual idea about a unit of measure. The unit can be any size, miniscule to gargantuan. The size of the measure depends on the size of the whole amount x the number of portions. Our formulas today have 4 portions. In other words one part in our formula is 25% of the whole. So take any size amount divide it in four and you have created a portion or part measure. What is important is that the portions are equal and there are 4 equal portions making one whole amount.  This is called a ratio formula.

Note:  These are very basic formulas made to remember. In actuality, pigment strengths very between manufacturers, therefore, how much you add can vary. Start with your largest contributing color place next largest amount beside that color with palette space in between . Gradually join the color in the center and slightly below the two colors. For instance, with yellow ochre, you would gingerly mix cadmium yellow light and a small dab of alizarin with the palette knife resulting in a yellow - orange color by joining the two amounts of color in part until you get that color. Don’t mix the entire amounts of colors together completely because pigments vary between manufacturers, and alizarin could overpower the orange, resulting in a variety of red. Next add a touch of ultramarine blue to the orange mixture, until you have yellow ochre. This way you can see the proportions of color you need to mix, and proceed to mix more. Always approach color mixing this way, 2 colors at a time, no matter how professional you become and you won’t waste paint. It is too easy to end up with a huge amount of color by color correcting, when you only need a little, so go slow.

Secondary colors are two primary colors mixed together.

Secondary Color Formulas:
 
Orange:              1 part cadmium yellow light
                         1 part Alizarin Crimson

Green:                 1 part cadmium yellow light
                          1 part Ultra Marine Blue

Purple:              1 part Ultra Marine Blue
                        1 part Alizarin Crimson

Tertiary Colors are earth colors (browns).

·         Tertiary colors are made up of red, blue and yellow combined.

·         Today we are using Cadmium Yellow light, Alizarin Crimson, and Ultramarine Blue.

Formulas for Tertiary Colors:

 Yellow ochre:     4 parts Cadmium Yellow light
                           1 part Alizarin Crimson
               1 part Ultra Marine Blue
           
Burnt Sienna:     2 parts Cadmium Yellow light
                         2 parts Alizarin Crimson
             1 part Ultra Marine Blue

              Burnt Umber:      1 part Cadmium Yellow light
                           2 parts Alizarin Crimson
              2 parts Ultra Marine Blue

Warm and cool colors: 
                        Warm:                 Red is hot

                           Yellow is less hot 

Cool:                     Blue is cool

                                                     Yellow is less cool………………….tricky huh?

The temperature of any color is decided by comparing it to another color.

Mix Neutral Colors by Knowing and Understanding Opposite Colors.

Opposite Colors are also called complimentary colors. Every primary color has a secondary as its compliment. Every secondary color has a primary color as its compliment. The compliment of a   secondary color is void of the third primary color. The compliment of a primary color is a secondary that contains the other 2 primary colors and none of the subject third primary color.

 Primary (think tri)                                 Secondary ( think  2 primary colors mixed together)
Yellow                                                  purple
Red                                                      green
Blue                                                     orange

Neutrals:  Take any primary or secondary color and mix it with its compliment.


Black: Mix burnt Umber and Ultramarine blur together for a great black.

Shock Treatment!

Mistakes Novice Painters Make Resulting in Lousy Paintings
Normally,  I teach what to do, how to set up, design, compose, apply paint, build paint, build focal points and critique your own paintings by reviewing the 6 questions you ask yourself before you paint to make your plan, and checking if you’ve done it,  all, so you  become…as a painter… the best you can be.
This time, I’m going to tell you what NOT TO DO!!! I’m going to tell you 8 mistakes novice painters make which causes them to make very amateurish paintings, and they don’t know why. Lots of painters stay amateurs all their lives because they make these mistakes:
1. They use black. Black in the shadows, Black to paint black hair. Black to paint black clothes,  black to paint a black horse…  Black to outline where there is no outline… like between fingers. NO BLACK!!! DON”T  USE BLACK!!! 
2. They paint cartoons( when that is not their goal). If there is no three dimensional look… it’s a cartoon!  If it looks like you’ve used a box of crayon colors to paint it… it’s a cartoon. The colors are flat. The colors are all pure hues, periwinkle, sky blue, lemon yellow, crayon colors…. Anybody… name a Cry-on  color… uh lime green, forest green…__________, ________,  applied delicately or strongly crayon colors are crayon colors .It looks flat and IT”S A CARTOON!!!!  If it looks outlined…  then the edges are all the same. Let me say it again: If the edges are all the same it looks outlined. If the edges look cut out,  it is flat it looks like a cartoon!!!!
3. Amateur painters think bright means white! Don’t think bright means white!
4. Artists that don’t want to learn  won’t finish their paintings. Let me say that again:
If you don’t finish your paintings,  well,  just finish them!!!
5. Beginner Artists use more than 5 values in a painting, or they use 2 or less.
6. The biggest mistake Amateurs make is they skip planning. ASk me…. Planning  is BIG ! It’s everything when it comes down to being consistly successful!!!!
7. They don’t plan their Line! Then there’s Line… Either they don’t understand it,  so they don’t even want to try to understand it or they think they are too above it…. The notion of line… pish tosh, pish tosh!  Who needs line,  when I can draw!!!!  And I’m talking about myself, when I was 14 and introduced to line and the 7 primary functions of line. I was too above it all. At that time, my professor, failed to say, “It’s gonna have line whether you choose it or not! It’s gonna be good line or bad line, and most likely bad line if you don’t plan your line. And bad line fails your work, everytime.
8.  Their paintings look like paint by number, because they paint like paint by number paintings!  First it’s  drawn, then this color goes in this little space, that color goes in that little shape. OOHH! There it is  again over there.  Better fill in the same color over in all the little spaces. They never do any under painting!!!! They never cover their canvas! There is white canvas showing everywhere!!!!  White white white white everwhere! Until that last little white is filled in… there’s one, theres one … there’s one…..and ta da! Now I’m done! No, no, no!!!!!  Do not paint-by-number patch paint!
So let’s review these horrible, disastrous mistakes and build a checklist of how to be a fabulous artist!!
1. Never use black. Mix your shadow color as a mother color and warm it up, cool it down as you paint your connected shadow throughout your painting! If you are painting something you recognize as black, remember you are painting a mirror!!! Black reflects color like a black shiny glass. We mix black, by reflecting color in it!
2. Unless you want your painting to look like a cartoon, you will always neutralize your color, all of it in your painting except for the brightest points of color. You will warn it up, cool it off.  If one side of your painting is warm then the other side is cool.
3. Bright means more color, more pigment, not more white!
4. Finish your paintings! Start each painting with the dedication of producing a frameable piece of ART. Every artist improves as they learn to paint. The only way to learn is to finish your paintings and search out what you did wrong, decide why it is wrong and fix it. Then it is finished. Each time you paint, you will recognize more and more possible problems, revel in avoiding them, and build your painting ego…. As it should be…. with how magnificent and clever you are for handling, no caressing your subject in such an artful manner!
5. I cannot emphasize enough,  I want to see your value plan.  I want you to use your value plan.  A value plan of 3 no more than five values plus or including white!
6 Here it is::::. Plan your PAINTING!! 
                1. Draw the line of your painting in thumbnails.
 2.  Draw the 3-5 values in thumbnails
                3.  Identify the focal points and make them support  a hierarchy.
                4. Identify the temperature of my painting overall.
                5. Connect your shadows
                6. If you have a good plan… make another one.
                7. Decide your color scheme.
                8. Decide your chroma.
                9.  Now choose! Stick to your plan! Plan to ask yourself am I sticking to my plan all the time you are painting.
                10. You do all this before you start to paint or render! You do it everytime! And your paintings will be a 10! All you have to do is finish your paintings, doing 1-10.

Now again, in abbreviation form you can now understand “Plan”. Answer these questions  before you paint:
1.What’s my line?
2.What are my forms? Are they puzzle- pieced together? Are my shadows connected?
3. What are my values?  What are my focal points? And who is the big Kahuna Focal point? What opposites am I using to create my focals?
4. What’s the temperature of my painting?
5. My Chroma?
6. My Color Scheme?
Now, as you are painting ask yourself over and over again:
 Where’s my plan? Am I sticking to the plan? Repeat  questions one – six often, then remember:
 1. No paint by number! Cover your canvas, no white showing and drop the initial under painting  value  so you can finish each area with the right value.
2. Neutralize all color – no crayon colors! Increase the pigment strength with no neutralizing at it’s brightest point of light, unless the item is a neutral color then put primary or secondary color in it to brighten it up at the focal point area.
3. Keep your hierarchy of focal points in check with one another.
4. Vary your edges! Use lost and found edges, Hard and soft edges!
5. Warm up, cool off. Warm up cool off. Warm up cool off.
6. Stick to your plan! If your plan doesn’t match your thumbnails from the beginning you are not sticking to your plan.

7. Finish each of your paintings. Ask yourself the questions over at the end a final time. This is how you have a fabulous time painting and drawing in a very short investment of time and energy getting over being a novice painter.  This is how you can relax and enjoy experiencing a perfect time of being in the zone, as often as you like.
   
   

Painters, my blessings are with you. This was a detour in my approach to students, in that I used shock to get your attention…but I did it for you.

Line in Composition - Before You Paint

    First and foremost Andrew Loomis is king! A great illustrator, painter and art professor, his greatest contribution to the world, by far, was his ability to teach what he knew about Illustration, painting, and design. He was the Shakespeare of explanation of how to do it and the thought behind design. He put it into words and nobody can say it better. He put his knowledge into concise, finite terms to explain the unsurpassed, visual examples he created to generously share with his students and the world his expertise. His words, his approach, his concepts of design are so definitive, he is quoted around the world. Because he had, and still has, such an influence on how and in what terms art professionals, art professors, and art directors think, and speak, he is no longer copyrighted. Once studied, his words come out of their mouths so frequently in explanation simply because there is no better way of saying it. Loomas volumed his oral and visual definitions and his approach to design, color, and composition into textbooks, and dedicated the books, giving them to the future. Andrew Loomis books are out of print, but his words breathe their way into other experts' books and teachings to appear as fresh and divine as the first day he put his brain synapsing art down on paper. To explain line is to embody the teachings of Andrew Loomis and what he made line mean to us, and pass it on. So if I quote him, while explaining, it is no small wonder! 

Here is some of what he put in my brain mixed in with what line means to me. Please take it and use it and become part of the cognescenti. 

Line as Composition 

    

Compositional line's functions in art are to convey it's own intrinsic beauty, direct the eye over a given course, and to arrange, and to create design. As your teacher, I cannot make you do anything, you are not willing to do, no matter if it would instantly make you a superior artist. However I am going to do my very best to underscore how important line is, right here, right now. LINE IS THE ROAD TO SUCCESS AND THE WAY IS CLEAR! JUST CONSIDER LINE BEFORE EVERY PAINTING. MAKE A 3-5 LINE PLAN AND FOLLOW IT.  TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO REALIZE HOW IMPORTANT LINE IS, PLEASE: 

 Before you start any work of art, think of your piece in terms of line in the following manner:

• You cannot escape line. 
• All line should have function and purpose.
• Line is composition in it's simplest identity.
• All composition reduces to line, therefore you cannot escape line. 
• So regardless of what you do or don't do, line exists in your piece of art and it is either good line or bad line that controls the success of your work.
• If you do not like the line of your painting's composition, then you will not like your finished product. (No, matter how well you do with the rest of it.)
• Decide and fix the line now,before you make a single mark on your canvas or surface. Follow your plan!  

    So, if line is in your painting no matter what, why not take a few minutes before each painting and plan, follow your plan, and be successful from the beginning. Because, no matter how good you get at painting, you'll always have to copy someone else's successful art , or copy successful photos to make an appealing painting,  in which you can still mess up the composition if you don't recognise theirs; or if you paint originals, you can instead be frequently disappointed, be non-advancing in your endeavors because your composition sucks, or worse, give up, all because you don't want to take 15-30 minutes to plan before you dedicate time to an otherwise loser painting. Is that strong enough, for students to get passed their laziness or their egos? In the least, it will set you apart from others if you decide to plan or not plan. Maybe if you force yourself to remember that a good composition can sell your painting, over a painting by someone else who has much more painting ability than you do, when their painting has a bad composition compared to yours. so people like yours better.

     To remember you must plan in order to be successful remember this always: You cannot escape line: it's going to be there whether you plan it or not, and odds are if you don't plan it, it's going to be worse than you hoped for.

    In Lesson 2 - Part Two, You will take the first step to understanding the complexities of  composition. This first step is HUGE but so, very, very simple, with HUGE results. Understand Composition using the brevity of line, which is coincidentally the first step to art analysis and developing the ability to constructively criticize your work, so you know what you should do next in your artwork, how to finish and how to know when you are done. 

How to Critique Your Own Work Part Two: Ask Yourself 6 Questions

 There are six questions you should ask yourself before starting any painting. They are the same 6 questions you should ask yourself during a critique. The six questions are:  

1. What's my Line?
2. What's my Form, (puzzle pieces)?
3. What are my Values?
4. What's my Chroma?
5. What's My Temperature?
6. What's my Color Scheme?

Oh and we could add, a seventh... "What's my Light Source?" But let's stick to 6 as a checklist. "What's my light source" is a given, however, it is important to check it frequently in relationship to direction and degree of light as it varies throughout your painting.  More on light soon. 

 

1.  What's my line means Composition noted by simple point to point line. The line can be straight, lax and drooping, arched, spiraling, C shaped, S shaped, etc. 
 When deciding your answer, you are to think of line as direction when you ask yourself "What's my line". What are the paths you want the eye to travel through your painting. Do thumbnails using 3-5 lines representing the movement you want to create in your painting. This is an elementary line composition that shows (1) entry into your painting, (2) direction and movement through your painting,(3) exit from your painting and re-entry back on and through your painting. [this is where you cut the exit off at the pass and move the eyes of your audience back on the canvas]. I call (3) the redirect.

Instruction: Ask yourself "What's my line" and reduce composition down to simple lines. Put it in a thumbnail. Do at least 2 designs, three is better. Then pick one. Stick to it when you paint.

2. "What's my form" means an item or groups of things in your painting, that makes up a shape in your painting. All the shapes (a group of one or more forms is a shape) in your painting should be represented in your brain and on paper as interlocking puzzle pieces.  Designing your painting by grouping forms and locking them together gives your paintings strength and integrity of design. It is what holds your painting together and keeps it from being boring.  

Painting Instruction 2: Ask yourself What's my form ? Do a thumbnail of puzzle pieces to represent your painting's form. Suggestion: Make your negative space (the air, or empty space) a puzzle piece. Design your negative puzzle piece so it locks  it locks into the positive space puzzle pieces (the objects in your painting). Connect your shadows to form another one or two puzzle pieces etc. Group volume together, people, trees, things to make a larger shape and lock it in place with everything surrounding it, all puzzle pieces.Think of Leonardo's Last Supper. See the puzzle pieces! See the groups of threes. See how the design locks together so beautifully.

Leonardo Di Vinci's Last Supper, restored

Get the feeling of volume and negative space. See how the painting locks together, first through the figure groupings, next through the blues, then the reds, the greens, even the fleshes direct and connect, just as the hair does in places. The ceiling and walls snap into place too.

(Painting Instruction 2 continued: Ask yourself, "What's my form ?")  Now do 1-3 thumbnails of your painting as an interlocking puzzle to show how you group your form before you paint. Choose one plan and stick to it. If you like, after marking your puzzle pieces and showing them locked together, you may lightly describe objects within the puzzle pieces as reference. Do not lose the puzzle pieces in your thumbnail, or your painting, when you do this. Draw the outline around the outside edge of the grouping and that is one puzzle piece. 

Note: If you are having a hard time looking at a group of 3-dimensional objects and just can't see the puzzle pieces or how to group objects, close one eye. You will now flatten out your view and see two-dimensionally.Grouping will appear to you more easily and you can make fine relationship decisions. Kern these items you see together more closely or further apart, or edit something out all together, to make a grouping into a form (puzzle piece). ("Kern" is a printing term, where you budge certain letters together or move them apart for emphasis and design when setting type. I always think of "corn" for "kern" and the kernels all jammed together in neat little rows on the cob, then what it looks like on a  looser, less densely packed cob of corn, or what it looks like if I remove a few kernels  to remember to  the word "kern". Today, some computer programs have "kerning" keys in them for publishing and design. Almost all word programs have kerning when you hit the "justify" tab to stretch your type flush on the left and flush on the right borders at the same time. It squashes letters together and arranges spaces to look good in a column of type. Visuals in a layout can be moved in the same manner for superior eye appeal groupings to make your puzzle pieces.)

3. "What are my values" means if I was looking at my subject matter as a black and white photograph what would it look like? Yes, every color has a corresponding value. For instance many vivid reds, red deeps, and crimson colors photograph black, as does ultramarine blue. And yes, different colors can have the same value. That is why you can group values. (It's really grouping the same degrees of reflected light together.) Right now, your eyes could be telling you you see a hundred, a thousand, gradations of values. Here's the expertise in painting... cut it down to less than six values in your painting, no matter how many colors you paint in it. Three to five values plus white is perfect for any painting, because it separates and defines the elements of your painting. Otherwise, too many values can be tedious, confusing,  and boring, well always more boring than a well designed 3 to 5 value painting.

 Now group the values and identify them in 3-5 shades of gray only. These will be the values you use in your painting.  Using only few values, (3-5 values plus white), quickly identifiable to the eye, makes a good painting.

Painting instruction 3. Ask yourself "What are my values?" Remember value defines form so the shadow on an object could divide an object into being part of more than one puzzle piece, and possibly 1-5 values. Take a look again at the above painting by Da Vinci  and see the colors divide into values. Now decide your values for your painting and sketch it up in a thumbnail. Again doing 2-3 three thumbnails of value compositions, will produce a better choice for your painting's values, so do 2-3 value-compositions. This is where a lot of inexperienced artists deviate, even when they have this material to guide them. So, be sure to stick-to-the-plan.

         4. "What's my Chroma" means how intense are the colors in your painting? How much light does your painting reflect? A dark painting is low chroma. An overall light painting is a high chroma painting. And medium is medium. You can have medium-high, and medium-low chroma paintings too.

Painting Instruction 4. Ask yourself "What's my chroma?". Look at your value study and decide, what you want it to be. Write the chroma you chose under your value study. If your value study doesn't match your chroma choice, fix it so that they match. Your choose how.

         5. "What's my temperature" means is your painting warm or cool, color-wise. Is it closer to red (hot) or blue (cool)? Now ask yourself what are the influencing colors in my painting? Is that a cool blue or a warm blue? A cool red or a warm red? Every color can be warmed up, or cooled off. Temperature is decided by comparison.

Painting Instruction 5. Choose and maintain the temperature throughout your painting overall.
  
Note: See Lesson 3 on temperature.

        6. " What's my Color" means what is my color scheme, analogous?, complementary? monochromatic, etc.

Painting Instruction 6. Choose your paintings temperature and make sure the temperature of your other painting colors are of the same temperature overall.

Note: See lesson 2.

So now here is how to critique your own paintings: 

1. Each painting you do, answer 1-6. 
2. Reference your thumbnails as you paint.
3. Check your painting and ask yourself did I follow the plan?
4. Usually you problems will be in the areas you went astray.
5. Fix it. Finish the plan.
6. If you want to change the plan, fix this painting according to this plan , then paint an entirely, new painting according to the revised plan.
7. Many Artists copy good photos or other people's work to start out. In order to evolve as a painter, you must understand why a photo or painting works in the first place. These six questions are The First Place.

Good luck! This is my best advice I can give anyone who is learning to paint. Internalize this checklist, live by it as a painter. Soon you will be in-the-zone painting. Happy days of painting are ahead!
Oh, and if you answer all these questions and do the work, it gets easy. 
Oh and all these steps define your focal points, which you choose and describe with opposites. (See Lesson 3.)

  

How to Critique your Own Art Work

     Be sure to photogragh your work in progress. Reduction is the best way to immediately see how things are progressing, alert to problems, and unfinished areas separate out easier. Often, a simple solution provides you, the painter, with immediate direction and an overall sense of accomplishment where you couldn't see it before. If you don't have a camera handy, get one. In the meanwhile, surprise yourself. Walk out of the room, engage your eyes and brain with something new, like " my, my, I wonder how sis is doing", trick yourself and pretend you forgot something back in the room you just came out of, return, and take a fleeting look around the room as if your painting does not exist and BEHOLD you stumble on your painting! Oh my, you see it with fresh eyes. You can immediately see it objectively where you might not have for the last hour of working on it. The same thing happens, (but without the drama), as it does when you see it reduced in a photo. As an art director, my photographers and I always took polaroids before the actual photo shoot, just for that crisp view of light and subject and to check the composition. In the small photo, you can see needed lighting changes, too much or not enough value or intensity, all along with what is working, and it is subjective instead of personal criticism that you accomplish. Now, it's all digital and on computer monitors, where an Art Director can see instant corrections and play with what if's! Amazing time for creativity because of being able to quickly see another view.

   Also be sure to take a completed-work photo. It helps you learn even more in the future.

   This is an in-progress painting of "Sweet Catastrophe", a young lady from the Illinois Renaissance Fair, painted in 2002. I painted 2 versions of this delightful subject. This was 24"x 36", oil on canvas. Afterward, I finished the lower arm, hand, and upper rocks, leveled the mirror and painted it as brown wood dropping it into the background. I also took some of the intensity out of the skirt because it demanded too much attention. I had a  Solo Exhibition coming up and hurried to meet a deadline for a postcard photo image and used this photo, then finished the work after. (No photo of the finished work survived my divorce, sorry).

     Conversely so, take a photo and find it is finished! Chelcey Offill, a promising young artist, painted this impressionism-style painting in one session during our Van Gogh Class. We were on the edge with it not being finished. Photograghed at the end of class, produced sound evidence it was finished. The photo here is a little cropped because of  wet glare edited out. I hope you enjoy this painting as much as I did. Impressionist work is rarely varnished, however we varnished this because it was perfect, but dry, Chelsey was disapointed that some of the color darkened when it dried and liked the wet fresh  paint look so we varnished it in the next class.
    Varnishing is easy with a sable-soft flat brush. Dip your brush in varnish. Place your brush outside the edge of your painting to contact the most remote edge and draw a long uninterrupted, one-stroke application of varnish across the painting, starting from the top edge of your painting's shortest side until you reach the opposite side of your painting,(portrait orientation), drawing the brush off the edge as you finish your stroke.The brush is held parallel, low to the canvas, so that the face of the brush contacts the surface of your painting as you draw the stroke from side to side across your canvas. Slightly overlap the next application with the prior stroke as you travel down your painting in horizontal strokes. BE SURE your painting is laying FLAT when applying varnish!  KEEP IT FLAT TO DRY. The finest varnish I have found is Maroger's Mastic Varnish. With the Maroger's Mastic Varnish, unlike other varnishes you can varnish within 2 weeks of the painting if the surface is dry to the touch. Longer than two weeks, you must wait a year for wet paint to cure. More on Maroger and varnishing later. More on keeping archival records to create provenance to come in future issues of Susan Sprigg Daily Art Weekly.

Lesson 5 is continued for Saturday, July 27,  2013. Photos of our arrangements sent to you via email.  Right click on them to save as and print out for class. I will also have a few of the photos developed for you're temporary usage in class.
 Go to Our class site and sign up if you haven't already: Be sure to see some prelimenary work you started on Sunflowers posted in the second photo gallery at susansprigginthezoneapplevalleyoilpainters@meetup.com. . On July 27, 2013 We are also doing a critique of artists work if you would like to bring your first painting, or any previous work. Here are some photos of works in progress from a series of 3 classes on Van gogh. The paintings are shown in reverse class order. The first painting below is a painting in progress at the time of Wabash, Redlands of the San Bernardino, Mountains, after doing the third painting shown (same area) in a Van Gogh  approach. My reason for sharing Van Gogh with my students is to get them loosened up, experience colors, and play opposites against each other for striking results, also to buzz colors together and to be brave. The third painting is after Van gogh in the second stage of the class: painting a familiar scene of their choice. I added more fire to it to finish. Photo not available. The very first thing I hadthe classdo is reference Van Gogh and paint like him as exampled in the third painting.

San Bernardino Mountains painted by Susan Sprigg, completed after Van Gogh styled paintings of the same area pictured below.

San Bernardino Mountains, Van Gogh style by Susan Sprigg

Van Gogh style San Bernardino Mountains by Susan Sprigg