Identifying Lights and Darks in your Paintings
Oct 27, 2010 Drawing, Painting
In response to a question from Delhi, here is a break down on how to identify the shadows and highlights in your paintings (or drawings).
Using the reference from my underpainting tutorial, I will demonstrate where the light and dark areas are. Here, I have blurred the picture slightly to simulate squinting your eyes. Squinting your eyes is a great way to eliminate a lot of distracting details and really focus on the large shapes.
When I look for lights and darks, I’m not looking at the objects in my composition. I’m looking for the values. Here you can see that I’ve outlined all of the shadow shapes in blue. I’ve outlined the shadows area of the cup as part of the background, because they are the same value. Value, lightness or darkness, has nothing to do with hue or colour.
By squinting my eyes, these are the areas that stand out as being the darkest.
Here I have outlined the highlights in orange. The highlights are any area of the composition that are pure white. This is where the light hits the objects directly. When I squint, the highlights are the areas that are much lighter than the rest of the picture.
You will also notice that I’ve circled the folds in the fabric. Although my reference doesn’t show this as a highlight, when I paint, I will include it as one. This is an example of the kind of artistic licence that lets you make changes to what you are painting. The fabric just happens to be a type that doesn’t reflect light, but it would benefit the overall composition to have some highlights in the bottom portion of the frame. If the fabric was shinier, this is where the highlights would occur.
Everything between the highlights and shadows are varying shades. The keyword there is varying. It’s not enough to have highlights, shadows, and one value in the middle. You need to create light mid tones and dark mid tones and provide a transition from the lights to the darks.
To further simplify things, you can convert your reference to grayscale. This eliminates the colour factor, which can be misleading when trying to identify shadows and highlights. Obviously this isn’t always an option, so don’t rely on it too much, but it’s a great way to begin to understand values.
As a bit of an aside, this is also a good test for your paintings. To figure out if your paintings have enough contrast (range of values), convert it to grayscale and compare with a gray scale image of your reference. You will quickly be able to see where you painting needs to be darker or lighter.
Tags: acrylic painting, drawing tips, highlights, oil painting, shadows
How to Start a Painting
Oct 20, 2010 Creativity, Painting
I recently began teaching a beginner’s painting class. I started with the intention of teaching the very basics, colour theory, colour mixing, etc. After demonstrating some techniques, I had my students get started on a painting to practice their new skills.
I soon realized my mistake! Most people didn’t know where to start.
Starting a painting is a lot less daunting than it looks. The most important thing to remember is to start general and get more specific; don’t rush into the details!
To start a painting, I use a monochromatic under painting. This is a thin wash that blocks out the major shapes and values. I would recommend using a neutral colour like sienna or umber.
Here I am working with a simple still life composition with a single light source. This gives me a good range of values to paint.
Using a pencil, I draw the simplest and most basic shapes that I see in my reference.
Next, I use a wide, flat brush to apply paint to only the darkest areas. I’m looking for the parts of my image that are in dark shadow. I am using burnt sienna, slightly watered to create a bit of a wash. At this point, I’m not paying too much attention to the particulars of the fabric or the squash. You might find it helpful to squint at your reference to identify the large areas of shadow.
Now I’ve added some more water to my wash to thin it out even more and make it lighter. Still using a wide, flat brush, I can start to block in the midtones. Here I am looking for everything that isn’t a highlight. At this point, you are ready to apply colour.
This is my basic under painting. It identifies the shapes in my composition and provides me a map of the shadows, midtones and highlights. It provides the foundation for your painting, onto which you can apply colour. It is also intentionally simple. One of the biggest mistakes a new painter can make is trying to get too detailed too quickly.
Always start a painting with a large brush, which will help curb any temptation to do detailed work. A rule of thumb is to use one size bigger a brush than you think you need. As you progress through the painting, you can switch to smaller brushes.
Starting with a monochromatic underpainting is a great way to get past that first step of getting paint on the canvas. Often, the first brushstroke is the hardest.
In Summary:
- use a large, flat brush
- do an under painting
- use a neutral wash
- block in the basic shapes
- look for shadows, midtones and highlights
The Funny Thing About Deadlines…
Oct 13, 2010 Art General, Painting
Some people hate deadlines. I love them. Without deadlines, I would get nothing done.
The problem I have with deadlines is that I work to them. No matter when they are.
For example: I got a portrait commission this summer. The client said to me that it wasn’t urgent, she didn’t need it any time soon, just as long as it was finished by November for her son’s birthday. I assured her that there was no way it would take that long.
Well, guess what? It’s still only half finished.
It’s a small portrait, nothing special and there is absolutely no reason for it to take that long. I have never taken so long with a portrait. Ever.
So why the delay? The deadline, of course.
I am a huge procrastinator. I’m the person who plans to submit art to an exhibition for months, and is scrambling on the last day to get things together.
In some situations, I think it’s an unconscious attempt to create a false sense of urgency. I do my best work under pressure. It certainly worked when I was in school. I would have weeks, months even, to write a paper, but I would leave it to the last minute. I’d hole up for the weekend, eating nothing but popcorn and doing nothing but sit at the computer. And it always worked!
The thing is, I am never late. Ever. No matter what the deadline, I will always keep it, even if I’m working up to the last minute.
Is it ridiculous that I’ve been working on the same commission for the past three months? Yes. Will it get done by the deadline? Yes.
What’s the moral? Who knows? There’s no lesson today, just rambling.
How do you deal with deadlines?
Tags: procrastination, time management
Identifying Your Artistic Strengths
Sep 1, 2010 Art General, Painting
As artists, we see a lot of artwork. If you’re like me, you probably admire a range of styles. I periodically get a twinge of “I wish I could do that,” but in reality it’s not a subject I am drawn to. There’s nothing wrong with having many interests and experimenting with new techniques (in fact, I encourage it!), but identifying your artistic strengths can help keep you focused and lead to a more mature and developed art practice. It is also an important step in creating a body of work. Once you know your strengths, you can either use them to your advantage, or challenge them.
Let’s look at a couple ways to identify your strengths.
Artifact Experiment
I did this exercise in the last year of my BFA program and it was a huge eye opener.
Each person was asked to bring a selection of “artifacts” from our lives. We weren’t told what kind of artifacts or what they were for, just to pick 6-10 items from our lives.
* If you want to try this exercise, I suggest you think of your artifacts now, before you read about their purpose!
One by one, we shared out items and discussed what they had in common. It was amazing how each person’s artifacts had a common theme. One person’s items were all about her family. Another person’s were the same oatmeal colour. Another’s had to do with comfort.
I was one of the last to share and I remember panicking, thinking that I hadn’t understood the assignment. I couldn’t see any relation between my items, but when it was my turn, another student said, “it’s like little vignettes of your life.” And it was! The artifacts I chose reflected my linear, compartmentalized way of thinking.
With a little abstract thinking, we can apply these themes to an art practice. The family person might focus on ideas of relationships and connections. The oatmeal person has a colour scheme to work with and the comfort person could investigate ways to express softness and warmth.
For me, it translated into creating a whole image out of parts, fragments, of another image. Compartmentalize.
Overall Survey
Rather than looking at your life, this exercise looks at your art.
Go through all of your old work and select the most successful pieces, regardless of style and subject matter.
Again, we’re looking for patterns and themes. What is it that all or most of your best work has in common? You may need to see past the superficial subject matter and try to examine every possible facet of your art and the decisions you make.
When I did this with my own work, I was surprised at the similarities I found. I compared my old drawings of fantasy creatures, a selection of my favorite school assignments and more recent abstract paintings. Even though they appeared to be completely different, closer inspection revealed that they had colour palettes of the same intensity, a highly structured composition and quite often a reference to the grid.
For example, look at these two works: a coloured pencil drawing of a fairy and a constructed abstract painting. Opposites? Well, they both have the same intense oranges and lines that draw the eye to a central focus. Both embody (or attempt to embody) a feeling of suspension and weightlessness. And these are the things that intrigue me!
Final Thoughts
These exercises alone may not give you what you need to develop a body of work, but htey can provide you with a jumping off point by ientifying the things you have a deep interest in. By working with your identified strengths, you can begin to develop your ideas and your unique artistic language.
Tags: art tips, artistic strengths
Planning a Painting – The Value Study
Jul 25, 2010 Painting
So, you have a great idea for a painting. You’ve done some thumbnail sketches and created an interesting, dynamic composition. You know exactly what you want to paint…
Time to jump in? Not quite!
Before you dive into the real thing, it can be extremely helpful to do a value study: a smaller, monochromatic version of your painting.
A value study strips your painting of all colour, letting you work with the lights and darks, which is just as important to your composition as form. This is also your chance to make sure you have a range of lights and darks to create good contrast. If your painting isn’t interesting at this stage, it won’t be interesting when you add colour! Stan Prokopenko does a great job of explaining how a value study can help you create an interesting composition.
Also check out this post where Stapleton Kearns critiques a painting where the artist has confused colour with value. According to Kearns, “Value is more important than color, as it is a part of drawing. Color is a decoration you hang on your drawing.”
If we digitally altered the painting on Kearns’ blog to make it greyscale, we would see a very dark, very flat painting. That’s a hint!
Doing a value study can help you solve these problems before you get to them in your final painting. It’s easier to match the value (not the intensity) of your colour to the study than it is to figure it out on the fly. The intensity of the hue can be very distracting.
When I did my African Sunset painting, I knew that getting the values right was going to be essential in making the sun look like it was shining. Doing a quick value study (above) helped me see just how dark the sky needed to be to make the sun look bright in contrast. This kept me from wasting time and paint on painting a too-light sky. Below is the completed painting converted to greyscale.
If you’re having troubles with the values within a painting, taking a digital picture and converting it to greyscale can really help. This lets you see the lights and darks without that distracting colour. A bright or intense colour doesn’t always make for a dark value. Solve these problems in a value study and you will have a much easier time with your painting!
Tags: acrylic painting, oil painting, paintings, value study
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