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.

GETTING RESTARTED

A student asked what advice she could pass on to a friend who has taken a break from painting and wants to get back to it. Here's what I told her:

1. Make a place to paint. Find someplace where you can leave yourstuff out, so all you have to do is clean your brushes and cover yourpaints when you quit.

2. Set aside 5 minutes every day and paint for five minutes. If youdo more, great. If you paint 5 minutes a day, your brain decides thatit is an important activity and rewires for it while you sleep. Don'tskip 2 days. Do it every day. The same time every day is good, too.

3. Paint for fun. If you've set it aside for a while, paint onlywhat you want to paint, what you're driven to paint. Play a bit.Give yourself premission to paint awful stuff. Give yourselfpermission to paint wild stuff. Look at what happens and solidify theparts that you like.