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Giny's Corner

October Contents - What a busy month!

Negative Space Painting

October 29 - Freewheeling (playing with colors 4 objects)

October 22 - Happy Hot Peppers (Video Hans Hoffman - Push Pull Color)

October 15 - Dancing Pears

October 8 - Toby in Autumn

October 1 - Toby in Summer

Art Quote of the Week

"Creativity Takes Courage" - Matisse

"Use the biggest brush you can for as long as you can!"

“It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form.” - Hans Hofmann

"Once we start to draw, all of a sudden we begin to see again." Frederick Franks, Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - Leonardo da Vinci

"Every composition needs a vertical, a horizontal and 2 diagonals" - Tatiana Anisimova

"I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing." Cezanne

“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)

Negative Space Painting

This was discussed in our October 29th Class. For the first object of the day for our background we painted on wet paper using our three primary colors, then let the paint run while tipping the paper in different directions. Here is the step by step process.

Giny showed three examples of her negative space painting. See Below - leaves, leaves with insect, and trees.

Draw 3 shapes, not overlapping.

Photo 1.Wet paper, float in 3 transparent primaries.

Photo 2. Tilt paper vertically, rotating every 10 seconds or so. Let dry. Let Dry after each next step. Using one or more of your original colors, paint lightly around your shapes, let dry. ( I forgot to take a photo, photo 3 is after a second round).

Photo 3: Draw 3 or 5 additional shapes, hiding part of some behind existing shapes, take some off page, and Paint lightly around both original AND new shapes.

Photo 4: Repeat... Try twice more.

By now photo 5, you may need darker layers of your colors... For each step, try to preserve your best color areas by enclosing them in your added shapes, remember, you will paint around them!

1

2

3

4

5

Giny's Negative Space Paintings - amazing aren't they?

Giny's Leaves

Giny's Leaves with Insect

Giny's Trees

October 29 - Freewheeling

First, good news, next week is NOT our last session!! Those of us painting today talked about how fun it is to "get together" and paint! Betsy suggested, and I welcome, modifications to relieve pre-class prep on my part. In that spirit, I'll toss out a painting concept, and each of you will come up with your own version. And as always, suggestions and feedback are welcome!

Our first try at this for next week is: Imaginative colors!!

Choose a simple object (I chose an apple). Section your paper into 4 quadrants. Draw your object 4 times (different angles or the same).

Think about the wildest colors you can for your object and your background. You may focus on complementary pairs (red/green, yellow/purple, orange/blue), or variations in a single color, or progressions such as yellow to orange to red...

Attached is my drawing and my apple.

Playing with your colors is important! You'll learn a lot by taking each of your primary triads and painting a color wheel. Two are attached for reference. You will see that off to the side of each one is an "exploration of the grays"... mixing all three primaries, but making them "lean" away from neutral toward each component. Excellent practice for shadows!

Second: We also took some today time to review the information and sharing available in the private web pages Darcie created. If we all upload photos of our paintings, we'll see the wonderful creations coming out of this group...and give us all the opportunity to learn from each other. So, take photos (with your phone) of your paintings and email them to Darcie, she will upload them! Darcie is also posting the "assignment" for each week, to give us one central place to look for them. darciefrye@gmail.com

Four different views of the same apple

Giny's Study - Grays From the Three Primary Colors - "Leaning" from Neutral Towards Warms or Cools. Warm - Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Yellow.

Playing with your colors is important! You'll learn a lot by taking each of your primary triads and painting a color wheel. Two are attached for reference. You will see that off to the side of each one is an "exploration of the grays"...mixing all three primaries, but making them "lean" away from neutral toward each component. Excellent practice for shadows!

Giny's Study - Grays From the Three Primary Colors - "Leaning" from Neutral Towards either Warms or Cools. Cools - Permanent Rose, Cobalt Blue and Windsor Yellow

Daisy Eiman Color Chart

Thank you for sharing Allison.

From Giny's Favorite Book -Making Color Sing by Jeanne Dobie

CAUTION: See her website for pigment update since publication. Do not use rose madder genuine, use permanent rose or quinacridone rose.

Pigment Update to Jeanne Dobie's book

Thank you Marie!

Marie Wilkes - I am sending several more paintings plus a chart of different color saturation. Giny sent me a link to w/c artist, Briana Brown who demos the “tea to butter “ amount of paint to water.

Also, my goal is to make my paintings seem more like w/c and have more transparency.

(The video Marie is referencing is on our other page titled, "Giny's Corner." If you haven't watched it yet, there is a link at the top and bottom of this page to get to Giny's Corner. This is where to find all the videos that are referenced in Giny's emails and much more!)

Marie Wilkes - Briana Brown "Study Tea to Butter"

Marie Wilkes Onion Study

Marie Wilkes

Classwork Corner - October 29

Giny's Examples

Today's class above: Warm palette used: new gamboge, scarlet lake , umb = ultramarine blue.

To the left: top and bottom rows warm (same as other one), middle row cool palette: lemon yellow, perm rose, cobalt blue. Each surrounded by its slightly dulled complement.

Allison

Derek

Darcie - New Gamboge, cadmium red deep, ultramarine blue

Linda - Aureolin, permanent rose, cobalt

Linda Zug Pears - Aureolin, permanent rose, cobalt

Betsy

October 22 - Happy Hot Peppers

Next week...peppers! Hot red orange yellow green! We'll be exploring color contrast, pushing a color towards warm or cool by laying in under colors. If the whole jar of peppers is a bit challenging, pick a few, crop way in until you have a manageable composition.

For colors: If you would like advice on colors you own and colors you will want to add, do a color swatch of what you have, label each one and email it to me or put up on website.

Push-pull:

Warm and cool colors act differently on the eye. Warm colors seem to advance towards the viewer, while cooler colors look farther away. You can use this knowledge to create dimension.

A bright red pepper will glow with warmth in the light; its shadowed sides will appear cooler.

You could use a warm red pigment (cadmium, scarlet lake, pyrrhol, vermillion) and shift to a cool red pigment (permanent rose, alizarin crimson) in the shadow area.

Another technique is to put a warm yellow down under your warm red; for your shadow area, use your red straight or mix a pinch of blue or burnt sienna into it.

PS- This I did not know:

The origin of the term. Abstract artist Hans Hofman invented the term. The teacher from last week's color workshop referenced Hans Hofmann...

Hans Hofman Push Pull Color PBS

Linear perspective- the technique used to create the illusion of space in a painting or drawing- has served as the golden rule for artists since the Italians developed it during the Renaissance.

Then along came Hans Hofmann.

Developing a technique he called “push and pull,” Hofmann proved that the illusion of space, depth, and even movement on a canvas could be created abstractly using color and shape, rather than representational forms.

In case you are finding the full dish of peppers a bit overwhelming, here are a couple possible cropped images. I also attached a black and white/"value" photo... which I got by opening the image in my phone photos, and in edit, chose a black and white edit... You will see that the green and red appear to be the same dark value. So the contrast we are going for is "simultaneous contrast"... term used to describe color contrast (particularly complementary colors), not value contrast.

Planning your color choices after working through your thumbnail and composition. "So the contrast we are going for is "simultaneous contrast"... term used to describe color contrast (particularly complementary colors), not value contrast."

Classwork Corner - October 22

Linda Zug

Darcie - haha this was my practice corner. I never did move to the left where my "real" composition was. I see that I had trouble keeping my yellow peppers yellow. Mine all came out orange. Another day!

Marilyn

Derek

Berrell

Allison

Betsy

Laura

October 15 - Dancing Pears

Painters can choose any of the pear photos to paint next week. Warmup will be a review of "turning the object". See Below.

Charles Demuth's fabulous watercolor of apples and folds is included for inspiration - not despair...!

Charles Demuth

Turning the object - know your light source

Warmup - Turning the Object

Understanding light source and shadows

Reference from Daisy Eiman on how light and shadows define form...

Three pear layouts to choose from or try all three for fun like Giny!

Pear Reflections

Pears Flat

Pears Folds

"Here are my thumbnails (value sketches) and drawings on watercolor for the shadow and reflection images..if you have chosen the fabric folds you probably don't need my sketch! Notice on the value sketches and the drawings. I outlined the highlights.. must make sure not to lose them ... !"

Pears Reflections

Pears Flat

Close up Pears Flat with Grid

Giny's Thumbnail for Pears Flat- don't loose the highlights!

Close up Pears Reflections with Grid

Giny's Thumbnail for Pears Reflections- notice highlights!

Giny's watercolors of the three pear layouts

Giny's Pears Reflections

Giny's Pears Flat

Giny's Pears Folds

Never get tired of painting pears - pears by Giny

A favorite... Cerulean blue and maybe cad yellow, shadows connecting the pears, playing up the pear shapes and personalities of the stems

Pears on a mirror... Variety of pear shapes and stems and using complimentary color for the mirror. Laying yellow under red to add to the warm glow.

Another Arts Center study - yellow pear with bananas and cherries, complimentary purple shadow color. Notice the purple shaded side of the bananas (the lower edge not in direct light) with the brush stroke following the curve of the bananas, and connect to the shadows.

Giny's Demuth Pears

The purple flowers play second fiddle to the reflections of the pears in the blue vase...

Classwork Corner - October 15

Linda

Berrell

Derek

Darcie

October 8 - Toby in Autumn

I am combining this with your drawing assignment for the next 2 weeks (Oct 1: Toby in Summer and Oct 8: Toby in Autumn). BE WARNED: quoting a workshop leader I had, "these are NOT good photographs, but they are great subjects". That means...these are the photos as I took them, not as I would compose the painting...you'll have to decide how you want to use each one for your composition.

Toby in Autumn

New Photos (Bellow) - Extra Toby Autumn photos - more green trees on the left to contrast with the colorful orange and yellow trees in the distance.

A closer look at the colorful trees in the distance. Think about expanding the area between the North and South Shore to allow more room for the colorful fall trees in the distance.

General rule for the order of painting landscapes:

1st: Far ground (background): less detail, less intense color.

2nd: mid ground: generally the area of interest, focal point.

3rd: near ground (also called foreground). Less detail, leads the eye in.

4th: water

5th: details

This generally follows the "light to dark" as well. The exception to the "light to dark" is the sky: paint it after the background, before moving on to the rest...

For the sky to stay lighter by the tree line, turn the painting upside down and let the paint move so darker will be at the top of painting.

Sizing the photo to the paper size

Classwork Corner - October 8

Giny

Derek

Linda Zug

Berrell

Darcie Tumbnail

Marie Wilkes

Betsy

October 1 - Toby in Summer

Cropping, drawing on watercolor paper, viewfinders & thumbnails, etc.

There was too much good information in this email to summarize, so please refer to the original email. Here is the title and date of Giny's email to help you find it. Thumbnails, sketches, and photos for Oct 1 & 8 - Tuesday, September 22, 2020. (It may be listed under the date September 29 because it was included in a chain).

I'm resending the photos we'll be working from, but BE WARNED: quoting a workshop leader I had, "These are NOT good photographs, but they are great subjects". That means...these are the photos as I took them, not as I would compose the painting...you'll have to decide how you want to use each one for your composition.

Toby in Summer

I'm including a useful tool for that: a viewfinder. Mine is just a piece of paper with cutouts approximating the proportions of my watercolor paper. You can also use strips of paper and move them around on the printed photo, or empty out an old 35mm slide... OR...the magic of phones, use the EDIT tool for different cropping.

Dimensions for viewfinder cutouts

Painting Foliage Tips

Pencils: softer leads (2B) for thumbnails, harder (HB) for watercolor paper. Because I hate sharpening pencils, and I paint outdoors a lot and don't want to carry a sharpener, I use mechanical pencils - pentel .09mm or .07mm for thumbnails; .05mm for watercolor paper (I buy leads separately, the pencils all come with 2B). I keep the pencils in my brush roll...

Keep an eraser handy to bring back any lights you covered over by mistake. You want a white polymer eraser like this, NOT a kneaded eraser: https://www.dickblick.com/products/pentel-hi-polymer-erasers/ You can cut them into wedges to always have a sharp point...or my favorites are the tops of mechanical pencils.