REVIEW Acrylic Painting Techniques, by Stephen Quiller

ACRYLIC PAINTING TECHNIQUES by Stephen Quiller.
When I picked this book up, I thought I would be discovering a world of acrylic painting techniques that could be applied to watermedia. Those techniques are in the book (divided into thick, oil-like applications and thin, watercolor-like applications) but what really enchanted me in this book were Stephen Quiller’s paintings. Each is filled with surprising, complex color, with startling, expressive harmonies. Beyond that, Quiller is a superb shape maker. His shapes are intricate, balanced, filled with windows, brushed with veils of acrylic color. Forget the acrylic techniques. Give me a book of Quiller paintings and I will sit, rapt for hours. That said, you could pick up this book and learn much about transparent, translucent, and opaque layers, special colors and mediums, and even collage. Tidbits on glazing, resists, and opaque passages are some of the highlights. And as always, Quiller fills his book with his special approach to color relationships. This is a book to study on multiple levels.

BRUSHWORK EXERCISES, PART 7

TIMED PAINTING: 37 MINUTES

This was nominally a one-hour painting exercise. We North Americans have trained our brains to stay focused for about an hour (although some would argue less.) Schools have one-hour classes, TV programs are an hour long (we won't talk about commercials), and so on. Keeping the time for this painting short will encourage sustained focus, as well as stopping us from fussing with the paintings (there won't be time).
Students selected their own subjects (though I encouraged simple ones). I chose to knife paint the tomato, since I had missed that exercise, lacking a tomato that day.
While we talked about the painting process, their brushwork choices, and the like, everyone laid out their paint and drew in the composition. I emphasized that deliberate brush strokes rather than frantic speed would be the key here. I promised not to interrupt them with suggestions, but let them keep their focus. Then I set the timer.
The results were fascinating. For me, the by-now familiar tomato allowed me to go to color with some confidence and less searching. Also, the choice of a knife was a speeding-up choice, since I could lay whole swaths of color at once. I was able to complete the tomato with about ten minutes to spare, and while there were things to mess with, I could easily have overworked the painting, so I stopped.
Student results were also interesting. About half the class forgot to key in their values, and while we had been focusing on brushwork for the entire quarter, forgetting value was a fatal oversight (in the same sense that Windows experiences fatal errors.) Those who had held to a strong value structure had successful paintings, even when significant details were missing.
Going back to their paintings, the students corrected the values and brought them to successful completion before the end of class... still an expeditious painting.
While painting quickly might not be a goal, as an exercise it encourages focus and attention to essentials.

BRUSHWORK EXERCISES, PART 2

PALETTE KNIFE

I know, it doesn’t look like a tomato, but this is exercise two of the tomato series. The idea here is to break attachment to realism, and throw a wrench into the works. Palette knife is unfamiliar to almost all of us, and we struggle to produce something that looks like a tomato. (In my case, a rock, since I ran out of tomato photos.) The problem, as I see it, is in creating soft edges. I can either find some way to blend with the knife (not happening in my world), or create an intermediate color to soften the edges that need it. Because this rock has a lot of edge variety, it challenges my ability to express it. Later I try a tomato. Much better.

OPEN STUDIO FAVORITE

CLOUD ROUNDUP

This started out as a class demo, during which I painted the clouds and the trees against the sky. Having painted several times in the late afternoon at the boat launch, I used my color memory to enrich this painting, inspired by photos of a highly mobile cloud bank I caught one afternoon.

SUNSET V, STAGE 1

Again, painting alla prima. Only this time I go back. There are some shapes bothering me, and I feel a need for more light on the right. Will post the finished painting later.

SUNSET LENS, STAGE 1

Painted basically alla prima. The painting feels mostly done, but I need to live with it for a while.

After a few days, I add some transition shapes to the clouds on the bottom left. Then I am done.

BRUSHWORK EXERCISES, PART 6

STROKE COUNTING

This is an exercise in making every stroke count. The rules I gave myself were: Count every stroke. A stroke begins when I put the brush down, continues through any direction changes, and ends when I lift the brush. That old habit of repeatedly stroking in the same spot... won’t work for this. Some interesting things happened. I found myself slowing down, making long, thoughtful strokes. No automatic mark-making. Is that a good thing to continue in everyday painting? How much consciousness is useful in getting paint on the canvas? Even though every stroke involved prolonged decision making and slow execution, the painting was completed fairly quickly. Maybe a lot of the marks I usually make on a canvas are the equivalent of “ahem.”

BRUSHWORK EXERCISES, PART 5

EXPRESSIVE BRUSHWORK

Building on the previous exercise, we now block in the main shapes, but then lay more expressive brushstrokes on top. Lately, I’ve become interested in the effects of stroke direction. Just pulling a long line of color makes a difference in the energy of a shape. I like solid strokes for solid objects, lines with movement for water. Here, the apple seemed solid to me, but I tried to add some roundness with the brushwork, and even a feel of growing in the stem.

BRUSHWORK EXERCISES, PART 04

BLOCK-IN WITH GRADATIONS, VARIATIONS ON TOP

This is actually one of my two main approaches to plein air painting, so not so much of a stretch for me, but still a stretch for many of my students. In order to make this approach work, you need to be able to lay color on top of wet color cleanly. This you can do by lowering your brush angle so that you are pulling the brush parallel to the canvas, allowing the paint to pull out of the brush as it grips with the surface below, and keeping the bristles of the brush from digging into the still-wet layer of paint.

BRUSHWORK EXERCISES, PART 3

COLOR SPOTS

The idea here is to see a color, mix it, and paint the spot of color in the right place. By carefully comparing and mixing colors, you gradually build up the impression of the object. Most artists who paint this way use a characteristic brush mark, so the painting breaks up into spots of color as you look at it closely, but from a distance, looks more real. It has an abstract quality, a breaking of the illusion of reality. Interestingly enough, the technique works best for me if I compare color mixes to one another on the palette rather than just on my painting. (Please excuse the fuzzy photo. I'll try to fix it later.)

BRUSHWORK EXERCISES, PART 1

TOMATOES
I have been interested in exploring different aspects of brushwork, particularly in encouraging my students and myself to use fewer brush strokes in their paintings, to lay down the paint thoughtfully, and have confidence in the mark. I did the exercises along with them, partly as a demo, partly to experience the exercises myself. This first example is painted with plenty of blending, as a sort of baseline. For most of my students, this is a comfortable way to paint. It has the familiarity of realism, which is an important stage in most painters’ development.

SHOW AT AURORA GALLERY IN VANCOUVER

	Cast Shadows; Pacific NW Plein Air Aurora Gallery, WA
	Reception Friday November 6, 2009
	5:00 pm -9:00 PM
	Aurora Gallery, 1004 Main St. Vancouver, WA 98660
	http://www.auroragalleryonline.com/

AN INTERESTING VIDEO ON HOW OUR VISUAL SENSE WORKS

Some of these illusions have been around for a while. What's interesting about this talk is the way he explains what's happening visually. Our brains interpret images based on what has been useful in the past. This has great implications for how we as artists express the world of light in paint.

Beau Lotto: Optical Illusions Show How We See

REVIEW The Oil Painting Book

THE OIL PAINTING BOOK

by Wendon Blake, Paintings by George Cherepov

After recently seeing the movie, LOCAL COLOR, in which I was intrigued by the paintings glimpsed throughout the movie, I searched out a couple of books by Cherepov, who was supposedly the basis for the curmudgeonly old artist, and this was one of them. Turns out, I read this book years ago, when I was just learning to oil paint. At that time, I learned two things from it: that paintings are built in layers, and how to paint vibrant skies. Interestingly enough, if this book has more to teach me now, I wasn’t able to see it. The approach is step-by-step, with prescriptions for what colors to use, which I have never found a very useful approach to learning painting. And because it is a relatively old book, there are few color illustrations, with age-dulled inks, making it hard to see the artist’s use of color. Most disappointingly, I didn’t get to see the vibrant, energetic paintings I glimpsed around corners in the movie. The search goes on.

BOOK REVIEW: BOLD STROKES: DYNAMIC BRUSHWORK FOR OILS AND ACRYLICS

BOOK REVIEW: Bold Strokes: Dynamic Brushwork for Oils and Acrylics, by Mark Christopher Weber. North Light Books, 2009.

This new book by Mark Christopher Weber takes the highlights of BRUSHWORK ESSENTIALS, his previous publication, and goes one step further, with step-by-step painting exercises to teach you expressive brushwork. He begins with the basics: how to get paint on your brush. Then, with three main ways of loading the brush, he demonstrates the variety of strokes you can make. Once you have the basics down, you’re ready to tackle the paintings.

Weber takes a subject and walks you step by step through initial washes and expressive strokes laid on top. By going through these exercises, you can begin to get the feel of how to choose where to put your paint to make the most impact. You can learn how to vary the width of your stroke with pressure and with twisting the brush. You can practice the essential color notes and highlights to simply capture a subject. The illustrations make it very clear where to put the paint in the exercise paintings, but not as clear how to get it exactly there.

The painting demonstrations are in both acrylic and water-miscible oil, a nice bonus if you are having trouble finding books in this relatively new medium. Personally, I’d prefer some demos in traditional oils. If I could wish for anything, it would be that he’d spend more time demonstrating how to lay paint on top of wet paint, how to create gradations, and how to add color into already painted areas.

If you’re looking for a spur or need some guidance in creating your own signature brushwork, this book is worth playing with.

EMOTIONAL LOGIC

Here's a book I recommend reading, especially if you get criticism from friends and family about being too illogical or emotional:

HOW WE DECIDE By Jonah Lehrer

Lehrer goes into aspects of decision making, both emotional and logical, and guess what? There are times when the logical works best and times when the emotional works best. And they aren't what you think they are. It turns out that much of experiential expertise relies on the emotional decision-making process.

"Every time you make a mistake or encounter something new, your brain cells are busy changing themselves. Our emotions are deeply empirical."

Enjoy the journey!

K

Book Review: CONFIDENT COLOR

CONFIDENT COLOR: AN ARTIST’S GUIDE TO HARMONY, CONTRAST, AND UNITY by Nita Leland. (North Light Books, 2008.)

Imagine a book you could open to almost any page, and find a thought to explore for the day. Nita Leland has created this book, in CONFIDENT COLOR. Every page of the book explores color with illustrations from a variety of artists, charts, and “Try It” exercises to emphasize the principles. Want to know what colors will emerge from your palette? Create color cards and organize them or display them. Want to create a more brilliant palette? Leland helps you explore this too. She covers basic color terminology and theory, the seven contrasts of color, and color harmonies. She includes exercises in limited palette and thoroughly explores many different types of palettes. Her exercises will open your eyes to working with color, not to creating color recipes. This book, with its wonderful stay-flat binding, is easy to open and use in the studio. A compendium of color thoughts for the beginning and advanced artist alike.

PACKING FOR AIR TRAVEL AND PAINTING

Stuff I took with me to Arizona (in lieu of clothes).

Black sun hat, black sun shirt
Testrite easel (with carrying bag, sling for easel, shade for easel)
Plexiglass palette

Stuff sack with bungee cord, roll of tp, plastic garbage bags

Raymar panel carrier with homemade panels
Frederix Canvas pad
2 prepped and unstretched 12 x 16 canvas mounted on
gaitorboard (for later stretching)




















M Graham Walnut/Alkyd Medium
MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) with Flash point highlighted, rubber banded to the box
Titanium White (2 tubes), Cadmium Yellow Light, Quinacridone Red, Cadmium Red Light
Yellow Ochre, Transparent Red Iron Oxide
Ultramarine Blue, Manganese Blue Hue, Sap Green

Rubber bands, blue tape, push pins
gesso and black acrylic

Whew!
I think it weighed around 15 lbs, but I forgot to weigh it.

Happy painting!

FRANK WEBB ON WATERCOLOR, Review of DVD

FRANK WEBB on Watercolor. DVD

This DVD, produced from a classic movie of Frank
Webb, is a departure from the usual step-by-step demo. Almost like voyeurs, we get to watch Frank in action as he creates two watercolor paintings in his inimitable graphic style. With guitar background music and voice-over, Frank makes philosophical remarks about painting and art while he hypnotizes us with paint. He doesn’t explain what
he’s doing. But it’s a treat to watch him draw, pull color out of
his paint wells, and lay his color into complex shapes with a large flat brush. He considers design to be of prime importance in art, saying about his subject, “What’s my chief pleasure in this?” With assured marks, he builds his painting, until his subject magically appears out of the abstract jumble of values and colors. Then he pops it into a mat and points out the design elements. An inspiring visit with a master painter.

SUCCESS IN CREATIVITY

Thoughts after watching Kung Fu Panda. I know, it’s a kids’ movie. But they throw in the piece of ancient Chinese wisdom: There is no secret ingredient. It brings to mind the advice frequently given to unpublished writers and not-yet-successful artists. There is no magic secret to success.

Like so many bits of wisdom, this is both true and untrue.My thoughts:

True: There is no one bit of knowledge or skill that separates the successful from the unsuccessful in the arts.

True: There is no secret that the successful artists keep back from the others.Not true: there is no difference between the successful and the hopeful.

It is not one thing, but a whole pile of things, including:
Brush miles/number of words/hours spent on craft
Effective work habits, which translate into hours spent on craft, and productivity rather than spinning wheels
Thoughtful study: some combination of work with a mentor and self-direction
Expanding on strengths
Improving or circumventing weaknesses
Effective rule breaking
Development of a unique voice (which some say happens after brushmiles/number of words)
Choices, limitation of scope, unique methodologies, world view, all of which add up to voice
Selectivity, working toward beauty of expression
Effective marketing
To sum up: expertise, expression, marketing.