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

Back Lessons: Introduction and supply list (prior to Sprigg Zoner lessons 1-4)

     Welcome, Sprigg Zoner, to having a wonderful time painting together.   My hopes for this blog: Within 3 months I can have posted reference step by step painting photos. By January I hope to have video's for you too. Meanwhile these are class directions and  lecture notes for my physical location painting students. I think they may be helpful to reflect on as the videos are completed and posted.

Here we go!

      If you are an experienced painter, bring the palette of colors that makes you the most comfortable, or the suggested class palette below. If you've been to workshops or taken lessons from multiple instructors, or read books on painting, you know each can add to who you are as an artist and the work you produce. 

    With each experience as a Zoner, you will grow as an artist: Doing is everything!

    About Susan Sprigg: I am a professional Artist and Art instructor and this is the first time I have made valuable instruction available to the public for free.  It is a project I have wanted to do for sometime, my way of giving to community and encouraging the joy of painting and making art. Painting regularly being a Sprigg Zoner will help you become the best you can be and adds to your foundation as an artist.

    

 What and where the Zoners paint: You are welcome to work on any painting you want, paint while I lecture and demo, or follow along taking notes, or you may paint the class project with your selected subject matter. This informal approach has worked well for my students in the past and I find it a very productive way to teach and assist painters on a weekly basis. Currently we paint at the High Desert Book Oasis lounge area.  We paint outside and sometimes inside and location may vary, however is currently stable at Oasis. Please join Susanspriggsinthezoneapplevalleyoilpainters@meetup.com for Class info and postings. Also join Susanspriggdailyartweekly@blogspot.com. in the white strip across the top under the blog title. Both are new sites. The blog posts are lesson notes with soon to be step-by-step photos to help students on line. I also do critiques by email.

     For a first time in my teaching I will paint on small oddments* when I demonstrate to you individually in our physical class how to apply paint, brush stroke, color choice and it's influence etc., instead of on your canvas during my painter assistance. This insures that your painting is all your own original art. You will achieve skill and mastery much faster by doing it completely yourself, to help you be more pleased by your own achievement. However, I can show you on your painting if you invite me to do so.
Sprigg Zoner Paintings are available for viewing under Pictures in the photo gallery. The Suggested Supply list is below:

Thank-you for joining! See you Soon!

Here are some helpful answers to questions my students have had in the past:
Palette colors: If you are an Advanced painter or If you are a beginner you may start with the most minimal palette of colors, and expand it as you paint. I think it is the best way to advance quickly, learning to mix yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, black and main palette colors. 

3 color palette plus whie:

You will need a 3 color selection of 37 ml tubes colors: Cadmium yellow light,(or it's less expensive replacement lemon yellow).

Alizarin Crimson, ( it is spelled many ways depending on manufacturer's spelling - Alizarin fades easily in direct light after a long exposure so it is available in many grades. Permanent Alizarin is a superior fixed color)

UltraMarine Blue

150-200ml tube of White (I use flake white but any will due.)

I don't use black, I mix it.

Brushes:
You may start with a minimum selection of brushes: 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch flat or flat bright (brights are shorter bristles), number 4 and 6, filbert, number 10 or 12 filbert large and a number 4, 5, or 6 round.
Brush sizes are not consistently uniform between manufacturers. So for the basics you need a mixture of flats, filberts and rounds which are small , medium and large in size. Large is one inch flat. Beginners, make sure they are acrylic or oil brushes.Standard Supply list:

Standing easel or table with small easel. ( I have limited table setup for your use at this time but so far so good)
2 clear small plastic or glass jars with lids.
Orderless Turpenoid ( to be kind to fellow students) I prefer quality turpentine when painting in my studio, mineral spirits are okay too.
Viva Paper Towels or cloth rag for cleaning brushes
Disposable palette or a flat plexi or glass palette 12"x 16" or larger.
2 8x10 cotton canvasses for your first painting. (one to paint on one to prep) Or you can bring any size you are working on.


Expanded palette of colors:
37 ml tubes:
Yellow Ochre
Cadmium Yellow Light or Lemon Yellow
Cadmium Red light, or Red light
Alizarin Crimson
Thalo Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber
Flake White is my favorite white, any white will do. I always buy a 200 ml. tube of white. It is the color you will use most.

I will introduce other colors for certain pallettes for portraiture, after impressionists etc.

Suggested Brushes:
Silver Brush Grand Prix Brushes
#4 filbert, round, and flat
#6 filbert
#10 or #12 filbert
1/2" and 3/4" sable  or sable synthetic (for glazing, smooth backgrounds etc.)
# 1, 2, or 3 Script liner 

I like mongoose also.

Add to your inventory as you wish. Wear clothes you don't mind getting paint on.

Hope this is helpful. i will introduce you to more elegant setups and suppliers as we go along. For now simpler is better for affordability and familiarization.

Lesson Five Painting Sunflowers PART THREE

Dear Sprigg Zoners,

     A fabulous way to learn about color and how you can use it is to study the Impressionists, Pointillism, Van Gogh and the Fauvists. I mention Van Gogh separately because he is so individual, attaining uniqueness by combining his knowledge from the aforementioned styles and branding it Vincent for stunning everlastingly great results making each painting that exhibits his developed style we know so well, simplistically striking -forever memorable.

     Here are some basics gleaned for you from some of my 6 hour workshops "How to Paint like Van Gogh" and "Become a Wild Beast!". If you have an extra long filbert 4-8, bring it to class for painting sunflowers. If not, consider ordering a #4 and #6 for a Monet style painting later on this year. A long handled, extra long bristled  filbert is an impressionists tool for licking up wet paint from the underpainting to reveal it with the subsequent layer being applied. 

George Seurat

 

• George Seurat was also influenced by Delacroix.
• Seurat analyzes how Delacroix used the artist's law of contrasts.
• Seurat unlike Van Gogh abandoned the Earth tones.
• Seurat and Van Gogh spent time together and Seurat influenced Van Gogh to go lighter with his Palette.
• The palette of Seurat was prismatic or rainbow colors like Van Gogh's minus the Earth tones.
• If he used earth tones he kept them to the siennas and ochres.
• Like Monet he added white to increase the reflective qualities of the color.
• In examples of Seurat's paintings you can see how Seurat crossed one color into the next, leaving a portion of the pure colors to be identified.  This matured into pointillism.

 

 

The Pointillist Dot

 

• Limited mixture of color on the palette. Colors are mixed with white by degree on the canvas, or applied unmixed directly on canvas.
• Palette is made up of prismatic or rainbow colors.
• Think in twos:  Use 2 adjacent colors on the prismatic color wheel.
• Think in twos:  Use patches of orange and blue dot to represent shadow and reflected
  light.
• Think in twos:  Use 2 primaries side-by-side to blur into secondary color.
• The 2 primaries fuse into a third color optically and with small dots appear grayed. 

 

 

Susan Sprigg

 

Delacroix:  See compositional parenthesis in his paintings.

Van Gogh:  Picked up on the circle to emphasize his focal point in his work.  Subtle.

His landscapes will have other approaches to encapsulating his focal points, similar to a parenthesis.

 

Developing Focal Points:

Analogous:  Opposite color used.

Contrasting:  Analogous color used.

Use your selected pallette spectrally – primary colors first closest to or at focal area, then introduce secondary colors. 

Pure color is more opaque.  Add a little white for it to be reflective.

Temperature of Comparative Primary Colors 

Cadmium Yellow Pale:  Cool of Cadmium Yellow Medium

Vermillion = hot / Lakes = cool ( Alizarin is a Crimson Lake color)

Cerulean = warmer

Cobalt = cooler

Ultramarine = coolest of the 3 blues (cerulean, cobalt, ultramarine blue)

Chrome Greens & light greens = warmer)

viridian = cooler

 

If warm surface being painted, shadows are cooler (dark blues/dark greens) and vice versa.

 

 

Pointillism: 

 

Difference between pointillism and traditional painters is the tonal changes in the color.  There is no neutralizing of the colors (well, very little) in pointillism.  It is done by the color put down next to it and white (not black).

 

Local color is the overall color of your puzzle piece before changes by toning it, adding white in pointillism, or adding of contrasting colors. 

 

Local color is influenced by white, yellow, and orange for white. 

 

 

 

 

Fauvism

Turn Yourself into a Wild Beast!

 

This is the final step to understanding color in our lecture series.

 

It's the first step to becoming unique!

 

Once you experience the Wild Beast within, you can extract the treasured means of logically selecting color.

Up until now, I have focused on design and composition. I've taught you how to neutralize color, greying color down with it's opposite,contrasting color. I've taught you to neutralize color everywhere in your painting except in the direct light in your focal areas. And now you are ready to learn more about color against color.

  Color is the # 1 thing we notice about a painting.

Color calls to us from across the room as we look around. 

Color gets our attention.

Design holds our attention. 

Together the two are spellbinding!!!

 

i)  Fauves means “Wild Beasts"

 

ii)  Two Main Fauves

(a)  Henry Matisse

(b)  Andre Derain

 

iii)  Matisse and Derain formed a partnership like Monet and Renoir leading them to fame.

(a)  They evolved their distinctive styles into vibrant color.

(b)  Colors were anti-naturalistic.

(c)  The colors were not imitative of their subject meaning their goal was not to duplicate color.

(d)  They did however see color and how it spectrally moved in the subjects before them.

(e)  The Fauves plucked out the color in pure extract from the color found in nature and intensify it. 

(f)  Gauguin in 1888 told his students to abandon imitative color and intensify color from the recognized primary or secondary color influence in their subjects.

(g)  In other words is the brown in your tree a blue brown or a red brown then lose the brown.

(h)  Learn to do this folks, and the next step in painting becomes your first step to developing a successful Style through color Knowledge.

(i)  Use this new wild beastie inside you that can identify color and tame it creating a color palette exclusive to you, that shows subtly in your work.

 

iv)   Combine this color ability with the priceless knowledge of composition and there are only two things left.

(a)  Technique

(b)  Production

 

Review: Six questions you ask yourself before painting:

What's my line?

What's my puzzle pieces?
What are my values?

What's my color?

What's my chroma?

What's my temperature?

Painting Sunflowers PART TWO: Let's learn from Vincent

 Painting Sunflowers Lecture Outline

i) Vincent  Van Gogh's Influences

(a)  Dutch Masters

(b)  Delacroix

(c)  French impressionists

(d)  Japanese block prints and ink paintings

ii)  Explain how each of the above influenced Van Gogh.

(a)  Discuss and compare early works to Dutch Masters. Talk about light and browns.

(b)  Delacroix's influence on Vincent came from books prior to studying in Paris. Van Gogh's palette was heavily

influenced by Delacroix's color theory.

(c)   In 1888 Vincent said "I should not be surprised if the impressionists soon find fault in my way of working, for it has been fertilized by the ideas of Delacroix rather than by theirs because instead if trying to reproduce what I see

before my eyes use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcefully. "

(d)  Vincent loved the graphic design of the Japanese. The

influence of the Japanese Block prints and painting style manifests itself in the geometric flat design that Van Gogh utilizes in his paintings. Like Japanese brush painting where paint strokes are iterated in differing type of stroke, Van

Gogh made marks with his brush and varied the mark in

strength and color. Japanese painting outlines form and fills in color. The outlining of Van Gogh's images is

reflective of 17th through 19th century Japanese painting and block print.

iii)  Technique Van  Gogh's Technique was heavy, wet into wet alla prima painting, (or he painted dry) using outlined form, using color instead of tonal colors to convey shadow and light, and is further explained below. 

iv)  Another Van Gogh  Sample Palette

Red Lake

Vermillion

Cadmium Yellow

Ultramarine Blue

Cobalt Blue

Cobalt Violet

Emerald Green

Viridian Green

Lead White (Flake White)

Earth Colors (Siennas, Umbers, Ochre)

   Technique:  Van Gogh:

1.  Used tinted canvas – commercially primed and tinted by Van Gogh.

Painted alla prima* or dry.

2.  Used a ground* of light pink, medium light pink and white. His ground was dry or wet. ( Have your canvas painted with your ground color before class. If not you will paint it in class andit will be a little more slowing to paint because your ground will lick up into your newly applied color to start.

3.  Used complementary colors and contrasted the complements, warm with cool, one light, one dark.

4.  Outlined objects.

5.  Focal points are multiple. One distinct focal point Van Gogh commonly used is in the upper left hand corner.  –Discuss.

6.  Paint is thick and one application on top another one stroke at a time.

7.  Van Gogh often used a course heavy canvas that demanded lots of paint. A smoother canvas has less tooth and thicker paint may appear a little less textured than the immediate appearance of paint on a courser canvas.

8.  He separated areas by outline and then painted wet into wet.

9.  He often reworked the paint and built it up alla prima.

10. Next, Van Gogh used strong strokes of color wet into wet to reinforce his outlines.

11. Van Gogh then let his paintings dry and finished describing his objects on top the dry paint.

12.  He didn't varnish.

l3.  Sometimes Van Gogh's ground would be split, i.e., blue grey top and vermillion pink bottom.  Then he worked in short horizontal strokes over the color joint of the 2 ground colors.

14.  To denote distance Van Gogh used narrow bands of color.

15.  He used white in most of his colors.

16.  He slabbed directionally to describe carpentry. (Buildings, tables, chairs).

17.  Van Gogh's technique is dense, opaque painting, wet into wet, and then lets it dry to drag wet paint over dry. The paint hops and skips over the uneven surface for a stippled look.

18.  He used mixed broken color. His greens and blue though were pure and unbroken.

Van Gogh quote talking about his use of contrasting compliments in answer to why did he choose to use these  kinds of opposites:

"To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones."

*Vocabulary 

alla prima  : painting wet paint into wet paint, mixing color on the canvas by painting one color and then adding a second color to it wet into wet and changing the initial color.

ground : the base color or underpainting laid down as the surface color of the canvas. Parts of this color can be left to show through and influence the entire painting. A ground can also be left wet so that applied strokes lick up the paint color and influence the next applied color by mixing into it.

Lesson 5: Painting Sunflowers PART ONE

 Lesson 5     SunFlowers (something went wrong with post so here it is reposted)

Lesson 5 is held  July 20th on location at Oasis.

We will take a look at Van Gogh to influence our sunflowers painting and to learn more about painting using a pointillism approach to color like Van Gogh did rather than using a tonal approach to color. Tonal means a color plus white for light or tint, and color plus black ( in our case, a mixed black) for tone like a gray scale. Van Gogh was influence by Delacroix. We will also be looking at the Fauvists to follow, who unlike Van Gogh didn't paint with tertiary. I will also post a second part to lesson 5, and take a closer look at  analysing Van Gogh's approach to painting his subjects.

Part One of Painting Sunflowers:

We will use sunflowers and other arrangements out of my yard. I will have 3-4 arrangements set up. We will be using pallette knives and brushes. We will use a Split palette of warm and cool colors. What follows is a is a Van Gogh palette of colors to buzz color against color like Van Gogh, the pointillists and the Fauvists. 

Van Gogh Split Palette (Split palette refers to warm and cool temperature in your selection of each primary and secondary color). Try to have these colors: 

Yellow:  Cadmium Yellow Deep

               Lemon Yellow or Cadmium Yellow Light

Red:    Vermillion

            Cadmium Red Deep

Blue:   Cerulean Blue

            Ultramarine Blue

Green:  Viridian Green

            Green Oxide

Brown:  Burnt Umber

             Raw Umber

Sample Palette

Red Lake

Vermillion

Cadmium Yellows

Ultramarine Blue

Cobalt Blue

Cobalt Violet

Emerald Green

Viridian Green

Lead White (Flake White)

Earth Colors (Siennas, Umbers, Ochre)

Tue, 7:11 PM

Message starred

Susan Sprigg In the Zone Oil Painters Notes

Painting Sunflowers Part One
 

Ideally  read and print out these notes and bring them to class. 

Show

 Look up these Artists and Identify the line they used in their compositions.

Delacroix:   See how he often uses  parenthesis type of composition to group his elements which draws attention to the area inside the parenthesis.

Van Gogh:  Sometimes he painted directionally using a circular approach to colors and brush stroke to emphasize the focal points in his work.

  

In painting Sunflowers today quickly do your thumbnails both line and value studies. I will check them. Consider laying down your direction by using your brush stroke direction to match your line.

Some Additional Ways to Developing Focal Points besides darkest dark against lightest light:

1. If your painting is an analogous color scheme:  Opposite (contrasting) color used in the focal areas to draw attention.

2. If your painting is a contrasting:  Analogous color used.

3. In this particular lesson, Painting Sunflowers,  try moving toward your palette spectrally – primary colors first, then introduce secondary colors. 

4. Pure color is more opaque.  Add a little white for it to be reflective. Adding white will diminish it's focal quality, decrease chroma and help with distance between the stronger pigment and the one diluted with white.

Some info about the temperature of the colors we are using: 

Cadmium Yellow Pale is the  cool of Cadmium Yellow Medium.

Vermillion is hot whereas  Lakes are cool. Alizarin Crimson is a Crimson Lake color.

Cerulean is warmer, Turquoise is warmer ( has yellow in it).

Cobalt  is cooler than Cerulean. Cobalt starts moving toward the violets.

Ultramarine is cooler than Cobalt.

Chrome Greens & light  greens are warmer with more movement toward yellow.

Viridian is cooler with more movement toward blue.

If an object has a warm surface color paint the shadows with  cooler colors(dark blues/dark greens) and visa versa.

A Word  About Pointillism:

Van Gogh painted by using color to buzz the next color to it, instead of tone.  

Difference between pointillism and traditional painters is the tonal changes in the color.  There is no neutralizing of the colors (well, very little) in pointillism.  It is done by the color put down next to it and white (not black).

Today's Vocabulary: Local Color 

Local color is the overall color of your puzzle piece before changes by toning it, adding white in pointillism, or contrasting colors. 

Local color is also influenced not only by white, but by yellow, and orange used as a lesser white.