Winter 09 Acrylic and Watercolor classes

FYI – I don’t know how long it will last, but as of right now KOCE Channel 50 is running art programs in the afternoons at 1 PM. You can learn something by watching other artists even those not working in your media but the 2 I suggest for my classes are: Jerry Yarnell on Wednesdays for acrylics and Terry Madden on Thursdays for watercolor. Wyland is also an acrylic painter but I think he is using the “open” paints which act a bit more like oils but if you like sea creatures he is worth watching, he’s on, on Fridays.

Acrylic Project Week 2 – Dusty

I need to preface this entry because if you look at the picture page you will notice there is quite a bit of difference between my painting when you last was it and as it is now and I don’t want anyone to panic.

Because I’m painting at an angle when I’m in class so you can see what I am doing, I am looking at my painting at a distorted perspective. When I stood back and looked at where I was in the painting, I really didn’t like what I saw; my baby was all out of proportion and didn’t look like my girlie at all. I knew I needed to fix her before I got too much further along, better now than when I want to be finished with her.

This is a good example for the rest of you though, because it shows that you can go back in and make changes to your painting if there is something you don’t like or want to change, you aren’t stuck with trying to make something work.

What I did was take my vine charcoal and standing in front of my canvas with reference photo in hand, I sketched in where I needed to make changes. Her body was waaaay too long so I checked the proportion of her body to the measure from the top of her head to her feet, because of the foreshortening (her body is at an angle going away from the viewer), her body length was ¾ her height, as I had her originally, her body length was more than her height and made her look distorted. I also changed the position of her head so she is looking more out of the picture, repositioned her eye and I made her ear a bit bigger.

Once I knew where I needed to make the changes, I had to “paint out” the areas of dog I didn’t want. I did that by doing much the same as I had done originally using a #12 flat bristle brush this time I used mostly my greens but added touches of all the rest of my colors and white (remember I had gesso on my canvas to blend with the first time) to paint over the excess dog parts. However, I did not JUST paint out the dog parts I also blended what I was doing into what I had done before so it didn’t look like I was patching a hole but like part of the original. This is important if you ever need to make changes to your painting: If you just paint over the problem area you are going to make it look like a patch, you need to blend into the surrounding areas so it looks like it is suppose to be there.

After I got all the excess dog parts removed – by the way, I did go into parts of the dog I wanted to keep so I didn’t have any hard lines – I set about making my girlie back to where we left off in class this week, which meant I had to re-paint areas with the darker under painting (sienna, blue, purple and white as needed). First I re-established my sketch with my charcoal, under painted then added a few lighter tones to get her back to where we left off. This was not hard and it needed to be done. Don’t be afraid to make changes if you don’t like something. We all make mistakes and we need to be able to fix them.

Now back to what we did in class.

When I looked at Dust last week, I realized that I needed to make the area behind hr head lighter to set her off in the painting so in class I showed how to take yellow, a touch of green, white and orange and using a #10 bristle brush (this is exactly the same as above except with lighter colors), created some lighter weeds and grasses behind her head. As I moved away from her head, I picked up less white and yellow and more greens, blue, sienna and purple so there was a gradual transition from the light area to the dark.

Remember that most of what we are still doing is under painting. We are not yet into anything close to final details even if we were doing a more impressionistic type of painting, this is still in its middle stages. From here you could go to a more impressionistic approach or you could go in the opposite direction of photo realism, it just depends on where you want to go with it.

The mixture of paint for Dusty is going to be only 4 colors: Sienna, blue, purple and white. If I am working on lighter areas (always have your reference photo handy) I will use more white, in darker areas less white or no white; warmer areas more sienna, cooler areas or shadows more blues and purples, I’m really using my photo as a road map for my colors, just as you should be doing. So what I will describe here is more technique and value (light or dark) or tone (hue).

I used my #8 bristle filbert brush, you can use a smaller flat bristle brush if you are working on a smaller canvas, but use the largest brush you feel comfortable with, we will get to small brushes later.

I mixed a color that was a shade or two lighter than the color on her head and using the chisel end of my brush, I made short, quick strokes in the direction the fur was growing on her head. Look at the photo. See how the fur is growing, and what direction it is going and place your strokes accordingly. Her fur is long but it still follows the curves of the body underneath, if you are doing a short hair animal, your strokes will be shorter, long hair, longer strokes, they all need to follow the way it grows on the animal.

In the shadow areas under her body – back leg and between her front legs – I used a darker, cooler color, all the time thinking about the fur and how it grows. You don’t want to cover up everything you did before so leave some of the dark between strokes. Remember she is soft and fuzzy, your strokes need to reflect her fuzziness.

For her nose and mouth I mixed blue, purple and sienna to get a dark color. If it is too warm, add more blue. If you need to, draw in the nose with your charcoal then paint it in along with the lines of her mouth. Next, sketch in the placement of her eyes, mix a bit of you dark color with more sienna for her eyes, when they are painted (here you can use a small round brush), you can use that dark color for the pupil in the close eye and also the lining around her eyes.

Next week: Foreground and fur detail.


Watercolor Week 2: Tiger

Because we were several people short on Monday, I didn’t do so much that those who missed class couldn’t get caught up but did enough to keep those who were there busy. Hope everyone is in class on Monday because we will be getting into some detail and it will go fast from there, maybe only another couple classes and I don’t want you to miss out.

I had to get the background finished so it would be dry enough to start on the kitten. Once again I used my gray color to add another layer of glazing to the background only this time though at the bottom of the basket I came across the bottom with some of the color, rinsed my brush and with just water, bled the color out and softened the bottom edges so that the basket fades out. This keeps any hard lines up near Tiger’s face where I want my viewer to stay. I let this dry.

Once the background was dry, I added color to the background this time. I choose blue for the primary color but there were areas where I also mixed in some purple, mostly the corners and did the same treatment around the bottom of the basket to keep the area soft. While this color was still wet, I dripped some red into the wet paint in just a few areas to add some interest. When I say “dripped” I mean exactly that, my brush, if it touched the paper, it was just barely touching so the red could get off, but if you have enough water in your paint is should just drip off your brush. Just leave the paint to do its own thing; it will add some interest to the background. Let it dry.

When your background has dried the next step is to start adding color to the kitten (these instructions apply to both versions of the kitten). First I took a touch of my red and added a lot of water. I want a light pink color for the ears, pads and the nose. I painted around the hairs in the ears, this is called “negative painting”, starting down in the ear and as I moved up the ear, I rinsed my brush and used a damp brush to blend it out towards the tips of the ear. I also painted the nose and pads. Remember, this needs to be a light color, we can always add more.

Next, I took sienna with a touch of orange and a lot of water to make a light orange-ish color for the fur of the Boy. This I painted on all the orange areas of Tiger. This is a very light color so be sure to use enough water when thinning down your color.

When his orange parts were painted, I use a thinned down yellow to paint over the basked area skipping the rim for now. I used my Indian yellow but cad yellow pale with just a little touch of orange will work fine, you want a golden color again it should be very pale.

Tiger’s eyes are painted with cad yellow with a very small tint of sap green or pthalo yellow green if you have it. This will be a stronger concentration of paint than the glazes we have been using so you don’t need to use as much water. Paint both eyes with this color, don’t worry about the pupils for now. While the eyes are still wet, pick up a little bit of sienna on the tip of your brush and just under the upper lid run the tip of your bush over the top of the eyes. It should look like a shadow, you might want to practice on a separate paper because if you use too much sienna or if your eyes are too dry, you won’t get the soft blend you need. Learn to let the paint help you. When you’ve painted the shadow, rinse your brush and dry it well so it is just barely damp and on the lower right side of both eyes, lift a bit of the eye color. It is important that you do this in the same place on both eyes, it suggests the direction of the light.

Back to the rim. It is a slightly darker color than the basket so I picked up some orange and yellow with a touch of sienna to start, mixed in water enough to make a thin wash but not as thin as on the basket its self and starting under the paw painted towards the front. As a moved away from the paw, I rinsed my brush and painted with water until I just got past his nose then added some more sienna to my mix to change the color and used this color for the rest of the rim. Look at the reference picture so you can see what I’m talking about. The rim changes color and get darker, your paint needs to do the same.

Next week: Yikes! Stripes! (maybe) and some basket weaving. Like I said, we only have a couple more weeks on this project.
FYI – I don’t know how long it will last, but as of right now KOCE Channel 50 is running art programs in the afternoons at 1 PM. You can learn something by watching other artists even those not working in your media but the 2 I suggest for my classes are: Jerry Yarnell on Wednesdays for acrylics and Terry Madden on Thursdays for watercolor. Wyland is also an acrylic painter but I think he is using the “open” paints which act a bit more like oils but if you like sea creatures he is worth watching, he’s on, on Fridays.

Acrylic Project Week 2 – Dusty

I need to preface this entry because if you look at the picture page you will notice there is quite a bit of difference between my painting when you last was it and as it is now and I don’t want anyone to panic.

Because I’m painting at an angle when I’m in class so you can see what I am doing, I am looking at my painting at a distorted perspective. When I stood back and looked at where I was in the painting, I really didn’t like what I saw; my baby was all out of proportion and didn’t look like my girlie at all. I knew I needed to fix her before I got too much further along, better now than when I want to be finished with her.

This is a good example for the rest of you though, because it shows that you can go back in and make changes to your painting if there is something you don’t like or want to change, you aren’t stuck with trying to make something work.

What I did was take my vine charcoal and standing in front of my canvas with reference photo in hand, I sketched in where I needed to make changes. Her body was waaaay too long so I checked the proportion of her body to the measure from the top of her head to her feet, because of the foreshortening (her body is at an angle going away from the viewer), her body length was ¾ her height, as I had her originally, her body length was more than her height and made her look distorted. I also changed the position of her head so she is looking more out of the picture, repositioned her eye and I made her ear a bit bigger.

Once I knew where I needed to make the changes, I had to “paint out” the areas of dog I didn’t want. I did that by doing much the same as I had done originally using a #12 flat bristle brush this time I used mostly my greens but added touches of all the rest of my colors and white (remember I had gesso on my canvas to blend with the first time) to paint over the excess dog parts. However, I did not JUST paint out the dog parts I also blended what I was doing into what I had done before so it didn’t look like I was patching a hole but like part of the original. This is important if you ever need to make changes to your painting: If you just paint over the problem area you are going to make it look like a patch, you need to blend into the surrounding areas so it looks like it is suppose to be there.

After I got all the excess dog parts removed – by the way, I did go into parts of the dog I wanted to keep so I didn’t have any hard lines – I set about making my girlie back to where we left off in class this week, which meant I had to re-paint areas with the darker under painting (sienna, blue, purple and white as needed). First I re-established my sketch with my charcoal, under painted then added a few lighter tones to get her back to where we left off. This was not hard and it needed to be done. Don’t be afraid to make changes if you don’t like something. We all make mistakes and we need to be able to fix them.

Now back to what we did in class.

When I looked at Dust last week, I realized that I needed to make the area behind hr head lighter to set her off in the painting so in class I showed how to take yellow, a touch of green, white and orange and using a #10 bristle brush (this is exactly the same as above except with lighter colors), created some lighter weeds and grasses behind her head. As I moved away from her head, I picked up less white and yellow and more greens, blue, sienna and purple so there was a gradual transition from the light area to the dark.

Remember that most of what we are still doing is under painting. We are not yet into anything close to final details even if we were doing a more impressionistic type of painting, this is still in its middle stages. From here you could go to a more impressionistic approach or you could go in the opposite direction of photo realism, it just depends on where you want to go with it.

The mixture of paint for Dusty is going to be only 4 colors: Sienna, blue, purple and white. If I am working on lighter areas (always have your reference photo handy) I will use more white, in darker areas less white or no white; warmer areas more sienna, cooler areas or shadows more blues and purples, I’m really using my photo as a road map for my colors, just as you should be doing. So what I will describe here is more technique and value (light or dark) or tone (hue).

I used my #8 bristle filbert brush, you can use a smaller flat bristle brush if you are working on a smaller canvas, but use the largest brush you feel comfortable with, we will get to small brushes later.

I mixed a color that was a shade or two lighter than the color on her head and using the chisel end of my brush, I made short, quick strokes in the direction the fur was growing on her head. Look at the photo. See how the fur is growing, and what direction it is going and place your strokes accordingly. Her fur is long but it still follows the curves of the body underneath, if you are doing a short hair animal, your strokes will be shorter, long hair, longer strokes, they all need to follow the way it grows on the animal.

In the shadow areas under her body – back leg and between her front legs – I used a darker, cooler color, all the time thinking about the fur and how it grows. You don’t want to cover up everything you did before so leave some of the dark between strokes. Remember she is soft and fuzzy, your strokes need to reflect her fuzziness.

For her nose and mouth I mixed blue, purple and sienna to get a dark color. If it is too warm, add more blue. If you need to, draw in the nose with your charcoal then paint it in along with the lines of her mouth. Next, sketch in the placement of her eyes, mix a bit of you dark color with more sienna for her eyes, when they are painted (here you can use a small round brush), you can use that dark color for the pupil in the close eye and also the lining around her eyes.

Next week: Foreground and fur detail.


Watercolor Week 2: Tiger

Because we were several people short on Monday, I didn’t do so much that those who missed class couldn’t get caught up but did enough to keep those who were there busy. Hope everyone is in class on Monday because we will be getting into some detail and it will go fast from there, maybe only another couple classes and I don’t want you to miss out.

I had to get the background finished so it would be dry enough to start on the kitten. Once again I used my gray color to add another layer of glazing to the background only this time though at the bottom of the basket I came across the bottom with some of the color, rinsed my brush and with just water, bled the color out and softened the bottom edges so that the basket fades out. This keeps any hard lines up near Tiger’s face where I want my viewer to stay. I let this dry.

Once the background was dry, I added color to the background this time. I choose blue for the primary color but there were areas where I also mixed in some purple, mostly the corners and did the same treatment around the bottom of the basket to keep the area soft. While this color was still wet, I dripped some red into the wet paint in just a few areas to add some interest. When I say “dripped” I mean exactly that, my brush, if it touched the paper, it was just barely touching so the red could get off, but if you have enough water in your paint is should just drip off your brush. Just leave the paint to do its own thing; it will add some interest to the background. Let it dry.

When your background has dried the next step is to start adding color to the kitten (these instructions apply to both versions of the kitten). First I took a touch of my red and added a lot of water. I want a light pink color for the ears, pads and the nose. I painted around the hairs in the ears, this is called “negative painting”, starting down in the ear and as I moved up the ear, I rinsed my brush and used a damp brush to blend it out towards the tips of the ear. I also painted the nose and pads. Remember, this needs to be a light color, we can always add more.

Next, I took sienna with a touch of orange and a lot of water to make a light orange-ish color for the fur of the Boy. This I painted on all the orange areas of Tiger. This is a very light color so be sure to use enough water when thinning down your color.

When his orange parts were painted, I use a thinned down yellow to paint over the basked area skipping the rim for now. I used my Indian yellow but cad yellow pale with just a little touch of orange will work fine, you want a golden color again it should be very pale.

Tiger’s eyes are painted with cad yellow with a very small tint of sap green or pthalo yellow green if you have it. This will be a stronger concentration of paint than the glazes we have been using so you don’t need to use as much water. Paint both eyes with this color, don’t worry about the pupils for now. While the eyes are still wet, pick up a little bit of sienna on the tip of your brush and just under the upper lid run the tip of your bush over the top of the eyes. It should look like a shadow, you might want to practice on a separate paper because if you use too much sienna or if your eyes are too dry, you won’t get the soft blend you need. Learn to let the paint help you. When you’ve painted the shadow, rinse your brush and dry it well so it is just barely damp and on the lower right side of both eyes, lift a bit of the eye color. It is important that you do this in the same place on both eyes, it suggests the direction of the light.

Back to the rim. It is a slightly darker color than the basket so I picked up some orange and yellow with a touch of sienna to start, mixed in water enough to make a thin wash but not as thin as on the basket its self and starting under the paw painted towards the front. As a moved away from the paw, I rinsed my brush and painted with water until I just got past his nose then added some more sienna to my mix to change the color and used this color for the rest of the rim. Look at the reference picture so you can see what I’m talking about. The rim changes color and get darker, your paint needs to do the same.

Next week: Yikes! Stripes! (maybe) and some basket weaving. Like I said, we only have a couple more weeks on this project.