April Contents - Other months are at the bottom of this page.
April 1 - Free time and/or masking tape Birches painting
April 8 - Within/Without Positive and Negative Painting
April 15 - Continue with Positive and Negative Painting ( 2 Videos) Teapot Apple Painting Tutorial
Transparent Watercolor Narrated Tutorial: Blossoms in the Valley
April 22 - Colorful Spring - Tulips, unifying glazing, Field's Rules for Painters
April 29 - Colorful Spring Continued, Skip Lawrence - PDF Luminosity
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - Leonardo da Vinci
“Value does the work and color takes the credit.” - Marie Wilkes
"A value study will save more time than it takes."
In painting, as in life, you can get away with a great deal as long as you have your values right. (Harley Brown)
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” - Picasso
Think pattern first, then drawing, then color. The character of your painting is resolved in the pattern scheme. (Edgar A. Whitney)
Plan like a turtle; paint like a rabbit. (Edgar A. Whitney)
We find beauty not in the thing itself, but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates. Junichiro Tanizaki
If, when facing the paper, you say to yourself, 'I'm an artist,' you haven't a clue as to what to do! If, however, you say, 'I am an entertainer, a shape maker and an expressive symbol collector,' you know the task ahead and how to proceed. (Edgar A. Whitney)
"You can't be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own lie, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color." Vincent Van Gogh
"Seeing abstract value patterns, not just the literal subject, is one of the first and most difficult things for a growing artist to learn." Jane R. Hofstetter
"With this painting, I learned that when I simplify and spend more time editing, the message comes across more clearly." Francis Marte, first time award winner: Honorable Mention, Watercolor Artist magazine Showcase competition
"With watercolor, the cure is usually more harmful than the ailment." "Make your color choices consciously, not by default. Color is mood. Such a powerful tool should not be wasted." Elizabeth Kincaid, "Paint Watercolors that Dance with Light"
"The Artist draws not what he sees, but what he has to make others see." Edgar Degas
"We must not imitate the externals of nature with so much fidelity that the picture fails to evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotion that marks the contemplation of a work of art." John E. Carlson, in Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, 1929
"I don't think there is any great painting that doesn't have good abstract qualities."
Alice Neel
“The great colorists didn’t try to achieve distinguished color by trial and error, and neither should you. Delacroix spent long hours at museums studying the colors of the masters. Van Gogh, a powerful and impulsive painter, respected orderly relationships of colors. Kandinsky used color as emotion – but he knew his color theory well. The more you experience color, the sooner your intuition acquires a solid foundation to spring from. Overcome lazy habits of seeing that lock you into your first impression. In time, you’ll become aware of the subtleties of color in everything you see. But don’t simply report what you see. Use color to express the forces that energize your subject.” Nita Leland
“Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and imminent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.” Johannes Itten
“However painting my evolve, color will remain its prime material” Johannes Itten
“A painter is also master of his choice in a dominant color, which produces upon every object in his composition the same effect as if they were illuminated by a light of the same color, or, what amounts to the same thing, seen through a colored glass.” M. E. Chevreul
“When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon the mastery of the medium.” Hans Hoffman
Today April 29: Wonderful paintings! Delicate tulips, velvety pansies, dancing bleeding hears...riots of splashes of color...! Today's tulip looked much better after adding a background in complementary blue-green...the tulip was essentially red-orange..an example of a "color scheme". I went back in to last week's white tulip because I had lost some whites, and the center frill was too attention getting...so I lifted selectively, and like it much better now. Am keeping the pencil lines...without a background, some petals would be lost. I did erase the preliminary pencil lines that were still there after I moved the right hand frill...!
(See Below)
Here's our lineup for the next 6 weeks...
April 22, 29: COLORFUL SPRING ...because its just too beautiful to do anything else!
May 6,13th: COMPOSITION
May 20, 27th: THE DREADED PERSPECTIVE
April 29th: COLORFUL SPRING part 2...choose your image...choose a color theme/scheme...work large
Glazing or mingling
Warm cool push-pull
Color schemes… analogous plus a complement...? Why not!?
Luminosity! A great lesson by the incomparable Skip Lawrence attached... For those taken with the idea of luminosity - color vibration from an intense color surrounded by neutrals, no value changes...check it out!
Some notes on color from Nital Leland, Exploring Color
JMWTurner was a master of luminosity, as were the nineteenth-century American Luminist painters, such as Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Edwin Church, who painted landscapes with stunning atmospheric effects. Intensity and complementary contrasts work well here, but strong value contrast spoils the effect. Make the purest area of color smaller and lighter in value than the low-intensity area around it. Allow this color to influence the composition throughout by using subtle gradations of analogous colors moving toward chromatic gray. Add accents of the dominant light, reflected throughout. Keep the color of the light untextured so it suggests light, not substance.
“The great colorists didn’t try to achieve distinguished color by trial and error, and neither should you. Delacroix spent long hours at museums studying the colors of the masters. Van Gogh, a powerful and impulsive painter, respected orderly relationships of colors. Kandinsky used color as emotion – but he knew his color theory well. The more you experience color, the sooner your intuition acquires a solid foundation to spring from. Overcome lazy habits of seeing that lock you into your first impression. In time, you’ll become aware of the subtleties of color in everything you see. But don’t simply report what you see. Use color to express the forces that energize your subject.” Nita Leland
“Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and imminent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.” Johannes Itten
“However painting my evolve, color will remain its prime material” Johannes Itten
“A painter is also master of his choice in a dominant color, which produces upon every object in his composition the same effect as if they were illuminated by a light of the same color, or, what amounts to the same thing, seen through a colored glass.” M. E. Chevreul
“When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon the mastery of the medium.” Hans Hoffman
Happy Painting - Giny
Altered - I went back in to last week's white tulip because I had lost some whites, and the center frill was too attention getting...so I lifted selectively, and like it much better now. Am keeping the pencil lines...without a background, some petals would be lost. I did erase the preliminary pencil lines that were still there after I moved the right hand frill...!
Giny - Before Alteration
Ginny S. - Center People Skin Tone Palette
Linda - new gamboge, aureolin, permanent rose and cobalt
Betsy
Betsy
Today April 15: wonderful paintings! Bottles, birches, fish, tulips, daffodils, trees, self portraits...!
Here's our lineup for the next 6 weeks...
April 22, 29: COLORFUL SPRING ...because its just too beautiful to do anything else!
May 6,13th: COMPOSITION
May 20, 27th: THE DREADED PERSPECTIVE
April 22nd, 29th: COLORFUL SPRING …
Suggest backlit tulips or your choice... some photos attached... DRAW LARGE... !
Glazing or mingling
Warm cool push-pull
Color schemes… analogous plus a complement...
Giny's Photo Facebook
Giny's Photo
Giny's Photo
Giny's Photo
Giny's Photo
Field's Rules For Painters
Giny's Tulip
Marie
Linda
Berrell
Berrell
April 8: Birches...and wonderful "do si do" with negative and positive .. !
Next week April 15th...We'll continue playing with negative painting...work on this week's double images...or find one that inspires negative painting...white coffee cups or teapot, lemons on a dark plate, white or pale tulips...seashells...white kitten...clouds...more water lilies??!
If you own Jeanne Dobie's book, check out her chapter on whites...and Here are a couple YouTubes of negative painting for inspiration...
Teapot Apple Painting Tutorial
Transparent Watercolor Narrated Tutorial: Blossoms in the Valley
Art quotes of the week: "I don't think there is any great painting that doesn't have good abstract qualities." Alice Neel
"Neel's achievement is being celebrated at a moment when figurative painting is ascendant, arguably more prominent than it has been in over 70 years" - Roberta Smith, It's time to put Alice Neel in her rightful Place in the Pantheon, NYT April 1, 2021
Giny - Original Photo with Paint Colors
Giny
Marie
Berrell
Berrell
Berrell
Betsy
Betsy
Betsy
Linda
Next week April 8th..."Within and Without" ... positive and negative painting.. Set up a simple 2 object still life on a surface...Draw your image twice. We'll paint it twice. In the first, you'll paint one object "directly" [aka "regular"], molding it with value/color changes...that's the "Within", or positive painting. Paint the other object by painting AROUND it ("Without", or negative painting). Then we'll paint the same image REVERSING the techniques for the two objects. Don't forget a back ground is necessary, esp. for the negatively painted object... See "Within and Without" images 1 & 2 below for description and sample...
Other references attached:
Unifying Glaze Demo on April 1st: Mountain 1 & 2: I had used a triad of colors in the sky and mountain different from in the rest of the painting and it looked disjointed...so I took the blue from sky/mountain and demonstrated a "unifying glaze" over the whole painting, used a tissue to lift out the snowy areas...I feel like it's one painting now.
Glazing: How to, step by step, transparent non staining colors (Christopher Schink)
Paint Characteristics, cool and warm triads, and colorful "mouse" grays: Daisy Eiiman's chart. You may not have these exact pigments, but you can categorize similarly...most paint tubes have a symbol indicating transparency.
Art quote of the week: "We must not imitate the externals of nature with so much fidelity that the picture fails to evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotion that marks the contemplation of a work of art."
John E. Carlson, in Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, 1929
Unifying Glaze Demo: Giny - Mountain Scape 1
Pre unifying glaze.
Giny - Mountain Scape 2 - Added a unifying blue glaze tying the different triad colors used in the mountain/sky to the foreground colors.
Christopher Schink
Christopher Schink
Glazing: How to, step by step, transparent non staining colors (Christopher Schink)
1st wash Aureolin Yellow, 2nd wash Rose Madder Genuine, 3rd wash Cobalt Blue. 3 Primary Colors
Paint Characteristics, cool and warm triads, and colorful "mouse" grays: Daisy Eiiman's chart.
Giny Listhiansus Positive
Giny Listhiansus Negative
Berrell - Negative/Positive
Berrell - Positive/Negative
Carrie - Within/Without
Carrie - Without/Within
Linda - Without/Within
Linda - Within/Without
Darcie
Darcie
Another week of...free time in the playground...paint what you want!
Interactive workshop! Share and ask each other for advice... or fun with Masking tape Birches?
Continuing our paint what you want!
Interactive workshop! Choices, choices...Share and ask each other for advice...OR
If you want to try something fun and new...check out Birch Trees attached...we'll play with this technique.
Take masking tape (wide easier than 1", but use what you have), rip vertically so one edge is ragged. That's one birch tree! Place it on your paper, add a few more, varying sizes, different horizon lines. We'll paint loose backgrounds right over the tape...when the painting is dry, you'll pull the tape off and embellish the bark...voila!
Other News/hints:
See "Getting in Shapes" attached below, a lesson in drawing artistic shapes..
Art quotes of the week: "The Artist draws not what he sees, but what he has to make others see."
Edgar Degas
Getting in Shapes A Lesson in Drawing Artistic Shapes PDF
Giny's Framed Original
Giny's Class Painting
Giny's Original
Use masking tape ripped with uneven edges for the trees. Vary the shapes and spacing. 1st wash was Cadmium Yellow and Yellow Ochre. Let thoroughly dry. Before removing tape do 2nd wash with Cobalt and Burnt Sienna. Blend colors on the palette but don't mix thoroughly. Use a large brush. Giny used an Escoda Perla 3/4". Add Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna in the wash for the ground area at the bottom.
Decide which trees are your stand out trees and your background trees. Make a wash with Cobalt and Alizarin for these background trees.
For your stand out trees add in birch tree details. Burnt Sienna and Cerulean Blue. Let details blend on the paper.
Carrie - Birches
Berrell - Birches street view
Linda - Tropical Take On Masking Birches
Linda
Betsy - Spring
Betsy
January 7 - Let's Paint Snow (Birches)
January 14 - Brrr.... More Snow (Office and Lake)
January 21 - Exploration of Legs
January 29 - Exploration of Legs ... Continued (Video Michael Reardon High Speed Demo Amazing)
February 5 - Exploration of Legs Continues ... to Landscapes
February 11- Value Studies of Landscapes
February 18 - Colorful Still Life Composition - You Design
February 25 - Colorful Still Life Composition - Patterns Continues
March 4 - Continuing Color Exploration Cool & Warm (Cory Wright - Simplifying a Complex Scene in Watercolor)
March 11 - Painting the Same Scene in Different Value Patterns (2 Videos Gary Tucker)
March 18 - Free Time Playground ... Paint What You Want (2 PDF's Sarah Yoeman Crows, Greg Albert -Pleasing the Eye) Notanizer App - Mark McDermott https://markmcdermottart.com/
March 25 - More Free Time (Artist Alice Neel, People Come First Virtual Opening Virtual Art Opening Alice Neel Sign-Up )
April 1 - Free time and/or masking tape Birches painting
April 8 - Within/Without Positive and Negative Painting
April 15 - Continue with Positive and Negative Painting ( 2 Videos) Teapot Apple Painting Tutorial
Transparent Watercolor Narrated Tutorial: Blossoms in the Valley
April 22 - Colorful Spring - Tulips, unifying glazing, Field's Rules for Painters
April 29 - Colorful Spring Continued, Skip Lawrence - PDF Luminosity