Solid and Strong or Just Boring?

Composition #6. Unclear values; boring arrangement.

Ended my five-day streak and took a day off from these maddening compositions. The next day, for composition #6, I set up my three Roshi teapots and lit them from the side to noodle on an idea I've had rolling around in my head. These teapots are HEAVY. And when I think of them, I think solid, strength, reliability. I thought a horizontal composition would support that concept.

An hour later, I had a three-value drawing with five values, an awkward light pattern that seemed inexplicable, no focal area, and an idea that's a dud. Even my husband thought the layout was a tad boring (he was trying to be supportive). UGH. The only good thing was that I got to draw my teapots, which I enjoyed greatly. The one on the left looks like a cantaloupe, the middle is a beautiful grayed violet, and the tiny one on the right is a patterned white.

Luckily for me, a book I ordered several weeks ago, to help me learn acrylics, arrived: How to Paint Fast, Loose, and Bold by Patti Mollica. I spent a good deal of the next day devouring it (and put off my daily composition for another day). The first 33 pages in the book are about, you guessed it, getting your values figured out. In fact, she says several times in various ways, do these exercises and get this skill under your belt. Back to my compositions tomorrow.

Comments

Finishing My Acrylic Complementary Study

I'm rereading Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, as I've decided that I really miss painting landscapes, especially in plein air, but the reason I stopped doing it was because I wasn't happy with my results and I wasn't making progress (ugh, watercolors!). Carlson's book is DENSE. I gave up highlighting it because almost every paragraph would need a highlight, but I am typing up notes as I read, with the hopes of eventually creating a cheat sheet for myself. One of the first lessons he writes about is his "theory of angles," where, for an average landscape, the sky, ground, trees, and mountains have certain relative values. Thinking about the six studies I just completed , I realized that I had arbitrarily assigned the sky a mid value, to make the house more the focal point, but according to Carlson, the sky should be the lightest value of the natural objects. Oops. So I redid the value study, using his theory. I kind of like it. Looks more ...

Value Epiphany!

For the new year, I've decided that before I start a painting, I'll note the goals for that painting session and/or the finished product if I'm not painting alla prima (in one session). I've sort of informally been doing this for the last couple of months, but now I want to consciously follow these steps: 1) write down my goals, 2) paint, 3) acknowledge that the painting is crap ( see previous post ), 4) note how I did or did not meet my goals, and finally, 5) create a next steps list. Of course, these steps won't be executed until I've done the all-important value studies! Last October I painted a lesson from Dreama Tolle Perry's Flow class , a cute carafe of cream with a white ceramic basket of strawberries. The basket didn't read "white" in my painting, which I didn't like, and I wanted to figure out why...but I wanted to use my own still life to do it. So I set up a scene informed by Dreama but all my own. My scene used my own props to...

Back on Track with My Value Studies

Value studies #14, #15, #16. I thought I was getting better, but then I realized they really don't look like anything. Oh no. Took a little break there. Not a good one. Prescription drug-related side effects. But I've got the issues worked out (I hope) and I'm back to work on my year of value studies. (I'm also rereading " Coaching the Artist Within ," by Eric Maisel, which is a GREAT book to use to tame the inner critic so that you/I can get back to making art.) A few days ago I watched a great promo teaching video from the Tucson Art Academy Online on value. Afterwards, I created three value studies from vacation photos. Studies #14 and #15 are from the same photo, but they don't read as masses that make up an interesting scene. Study #16 reads as three distinct value masses, but you really don't know what it is (a canyon in Zion). I'll need to think about these some more. Barn near Holdener Park, Livermore, CA Meanwhile, I reread ...

Becoming an Artist

Search This Blog