Saturday, June 5, 2010

Class Notes - June 2, 2010

  • Setting up to paint
    • The Easel
      • Should be almost perfectly vertical to avoid distortion.  Tilt it slightly back to prevent your canvas from falling off while adjusting.
      • The canvas should be at your eye level, not above or below.  This is also to prevent distortion.  If you are working on a large canvas, move the part you are working on to your eye level.  A good easel will make this very easy to do.
      • If you are right-handed, it's ideal to have the easel on your right, so you are looking over the left edge to see the subject.  In group settings, it's not always possible to do this.
    • The Table
      • Use an easily movable table to hold extra brushes, medium, tubes of paint, your palette (if you are not using a thumb palette), etc.
      • If possible, set up the table on the side of your dominant hand, or right in front of you (between you and the easel).
      • As an exercise, try placing the table far back from your easel, to force yourself to step back from your painting.
    • The Surrounding Area
      • Make sure the surrounding area is clear to allow yourself to move around without tripping.  If possible, try to leave a path behind you to allow yourself to step back from the easel easily.
  • Using a Mirror
    • Use it, and use it often
    • For some reason, as we work on a piece we lose our ability to view it objectively.  This phenomenon seems to fade only slightly with experience- it's an ongoing problem that will follow us throughout our careers as artists.  What we can do is learn to be consistent & diligent about counteracting this phenomenon.  The mains tools we have for this are stepping back, viewing our piece in a mirror, and taking breaks where we don't look at our piece.  Also, we can make efforts to constantly "read" our own piece as if we were someone else.
  • Dealing With Frustration
    • Frustration is a major challenge to learning- far greater a challenge than talent, coordination, or any of the other usual excuses.  Particularly at the beginning, frustration along with decisions we've made about ourselves are constant hurdles that we have to face.  Learning our own patterns of frustration and becoming aware of what leads up to it can be extremely helpful in both speeding your learning and making it a more enjoyable ride.  Frustration never really goes away, and will be a factor in our art-making so long as we continue it- regardless of the level we reach.  It's nice to think "If only I get here, I won't be so frustrated all the time."  But I guarantee there will always be another level to get to, and you will wonder why you can't seem to make it there when you want to.  Start developing awareness of this frustration (and what leads up to it) now.
  • Making Decisions
    • Really make each decision as if it were gospel, but be prepared to throw it out without hesitation the instant you find out it's wrong.  Have authority in both making decisions and changing your mind.
    • A Major League umpire recently blew a call on the last play of a game that cost a pitcher a perfect game (a perfect game is where the pitcher allows no hits and no walks, and the fielders commit no errors.  There have only been 20 perfect games in the history of Major League Baseball).  There was a somewhat close play at first base with two outs in the last inning- replays showed clearly that the runner was out, but the umpire called him safe.  The umpire said that when the play happened, from his vantage point he really saw the runner as safe, so immediately called him safe.  He admitted after viewing replays that he was incorrect, but that he really saw it that way from his position on the field.  The key here is that in the heat of the game the umpire didn't waffle or hesitate- he called the runner safe instantly, and with authority, because that's what he saw.  However, when he was able to view the play from a different angle, he was able to see that he was wrong and admitted it.  This is how we need to make decisions when painting or drawing- whatever stage we are at in our piece, we need to make a firm decision about whatever we are doing. At a later stage, we might find out we were wrong, which is really just seeing or piece from a different viewpoint (in the 4th dimension, baby).  Fortunately, since we are using oil paint, we can easily cover or correct our mistakes- unlike the umpire who, after a long and successful career as a Major League umpire, will go down in history as the ump who blew the call.
  • Dealing With Reflections and Glossiness
    • Reflection is a problem we run into quickly as painters. If we are painting something with a surface that's almost purely reflective, such as a mirror or polished metal, we can sometimes get away with copying what we see, which will often describe the shape of the form as we do it (particularly on cylinders).  Things get complicated on glossy objects (also called shiny objects), which display both diffuse shading and reflection.  If just copy what we see and are not careful, the reflections might make it difficult for the viewer to understand the shape of the form we are painting.  We have to realize that reflectivity and glossiness are descriptors of surface quality.  They are secondary to the actual shape of the form, which is more important.  In some circumstances we may have to alter or eliminate the reflections we see in order to clearly represent the form.  As an example, let's use a metaphor with cars, which usually have nice, shiny paint:
      • Say you have a 1984 Chevy Camaro (yes, a Camaro).  It's low and sleek and awesome, and has bright, shiny, red paint.  We could look at another Camaro from the same year- but with blue paint- and we'd say "Oh, it's another Camaro".  But if we saw a giant Hummer we'd say "Oh, that's not a Camaro"- even if it has the same shiny red paint.  We could be cheapskates and repaint our car with house paint after our friend keyed his name into the hood.  The paint would become lose its shininess and become matte, but we'd still say it was a Camaro. We could even make a model of our Camaro out of popsicle sticks, and people would say "Hey, cool Camaro model"- even if we didn't paint the popsicle sticks to match the color of the car.
      • Our first job as painters is to make what's on our canvas appear to have the same shape as a Camaro (assuming, of course, we are painting our awesome Camaro).  We can use colors that are pretty close to save time down the road, but even if we mess up the color people will still recognize that we're painting a Camaro.  After it's clear that it's a Camaro we want to worry about making it look shiny/glossy, which means adding reflections.  In the process of adding reflections we might decide to change or eliminate parts of a reflection if we find it compromises the sense of the form.  There may also be places where the reflections will clarify the sense of form, or places where if we slightly modify the reflections it will clarify the form.  Of course, all this doesn't have to be done in such a strict order or as separate steps, but the point is that the shape is most important.
      • Also, never paint a Camaro, unless you are getting a lot of money for it.
    • Tip for recognizing if you're looking glossiness or reflections: If it moves when you move your eye position, it's reflection.  The ability to do this when working from life is very useful.
    • If you're being deliberate and ignoring reflection at first, what should you paint if you're not painting the reflection?  Answer: whatever is "behind" the reflection.  If possible, move to a position where there isn't a reflection, or try to eliminate the reflection by blocking the object(s) being reflected (preferably with something black or very low value), and then paint what you can see in that spot.  If that's not possible, make an intelligent decision about what would be there, given the local color of the object and the lighting conditions.  Again, there is no law that says you can't paint the reflections right from the beginning, but keep in mind all the trouble they can cause.
    • Unless there is enough information in your piece to clearly identify the reflections as reflections, they will often be mistaken by the viewer as indicators of form.  Here are a few ways to clearly indicate reflection:
      • Add enough detail so that it's clear that what you are painting is a reflection.  This usually requires a lot of time.
      • Utilize some quality of paint (thick, thin, translucent, etc) that's used only for reflections.  
      • Reserve some shift in hue, value, or chroma to indicate reflection- for example, shifts in value and chroma might indicate form, but shifts in hue indicate reflection (or any other way that makes sense for a given piece).
      • Set thresholds for one or more of hue, value, and chroma. For example, limit your values on a given form from values 0-8.  Anything above value 8 can read as reflection (this works well for glossy objects with strong highlights).
      • Other methods that I can't think of right now.
      • Which solution to use depends on the challenges inherent in the subject, and personal taste.  For example, if you are painting a subject with lots of local color changes, you might not be able to use hue, value, or chroma to indicate reflection, since they are likely already being used to indicate local color change.  In this case, using a threshold of value might be a better solution, or reserving some quality of paint such as translucency.
  • Finding our own patterns
    • Do we tend to skew our drawings one way or another?  Or do we habitually overstate darks or lights, or understate contrast?  Do we tend to overstate the value of reflected lights? Do we tend to avoid certain areas on our pieces, such as the edges, or where things get complicated?
    • In a similar vein- when do we get angry and it affects our work? Do we tend towards angry frustration or resigned depression?  What leads up to that?  When do we get lazy?  When do we get wishy-washy?  When do we just get plain confused?
    • Don't tell yourself what to do, or worry too much about what you're doing.  Instead, become aware of what you are doing.  Then it will be much clearer what direction to go.
  • Overlap (see post on overlap)
  • Cylinder construction (see post on cylinder construction)
  • Modeling factors on cylinders and spheres (coming soon)
  • Convex vs Concave forms
    • Watch whether a curved form is convex, concave, or neither.  The modeling factors should follow this as well.  
    • On the figure, the form is almost always convex.  In fact, it's close enough to just say always.  If you see something that looks concave on a figure, try to reinterpret it as two or more convex forms overlapping, unless you are intending to stylize the figure.
  • Be lazy- use a lot of brushes.
    • In an ideal world, I'd have a set of six or seven brushes per local color (one brush per modeling factor), and an assistant to hand me the 6-7 brushes for each color when I need them.  Each brush would have a different obvious marking and texture for each modeling factor, so I could distinguish them out easily by sight or by feel.
    • Using a lot of brushes is not always the best way to work- at times it can be very confusing.  For some people it's too distracting.  But there are many advantages when it's feasible, so it's very useful to try.

No comments:

Post a Comment