Light in the Dark--Value

This week, I worked on a portrait of my son. I took the reference photo with my iPhone, but it took it when it was dark with just the table lamp shining on his face. It obscured most of his face and left fun shadows to play with.

I've really got to do my research on taking better photos of art! But anyway, this piece is a good example of value changes and contrast creating excitement.

Part of me really wanted to define more facial features on the left, but it was so dark that they weren't really apparent. I think it gives it some appearance of mystery.

Now, a problem I did run across is that I worked with a lot of glazes. I also didn't use white in the darker areas of the painting. This meant that most of the colors were very transparent, leaving the work streaker than I wanted. To correct this, I spent some time an arms length away using a long brush to add touches of thick, opaque color. I even had to borrow some better art supplies from my teacher because my student-grade (I'm only buying professional grade as I run out) burnt sienna and burnt umber were too transparent.

It's Not What You See

"What screws us up the most is the picture in our mind of what its supposed to be."

Good advice for life and art.

That was the theme of my art this week. I was attempting to paint the bridge in Little Rock that is historical, sitting in front of the modern Clinton library. The only problem is that we visited during spring break, and although the daffodils were blooming around Arkansas, the plants near the bridge weren't. Add that to a cold, gray day, and I didn't have much to go on.

It provided me an excellent opportunity to experiment with kicking all the colors up a notch. I was going for full-on colorist approach. Nothing was going to be realistic.

Okay, so it looks better in person. The photo also cuts off the bottom which repeats the orange. And I put that wonderful quote there too!

Cobalt Turquoise, Magenta, and Orange do wonders for making this bridge exciting. My class enjoyed seeing me break out of the normal. I'll probably try again down the road with some more muted tones. We'll see!

The Problem With Grass

No, the problem with grass is not that it keeps growing, although that is a problem if you have to mow! (I am all about xeriscaping  myself.) The problem I am talking about is painting grass. It can be gosh darn frustrating.

I have found that over time I have often avoided large fields of grass, or even one color of flowers (if we aren't doing at least semi-abstract) because getting the right texture without painting all the leaves has seemed hard. I watch my teacher whip out grass by scrambling her brush around, and it still looks like grass. For me, nope, it tends to look like a mottled background or a child's picture.

Having said all of that, I tackled it in this week's project.

(Please excuse the photo, it wasn't flat when I photographed it.)

One layer in, and I was already happy with my mountains and water. Can't you just see the mist!

It took 2 layers to get the man right. And I love those pine trees on the side of the mountain, a little blue in them really made them work.

But it took about 5 different layers to work on the grass, including one point where I had to leave the room just so I wouldn't have to look at the painting for a few minutes because I was so frustrated. Yes, it was that bad. I began to wish that I had just left the foreground very abstract.

But I didn't.

I kept going, and I have to admit, it turned out alright. I can see that the hill in front is in the foreground, and the rest of the mountain fades back. I would have loved to add a few more pops of color and excitement, but I decided to stop while I was ahead. No use throwing in some new colors and having to start that grass over!

Art with the Kids

My son told me that he doesn't like art at school because the teacher wants him to be clean and neat. He also said that she is only letting them use markers and crayons and not paint. I don't know if this stems from the mess or teachers having to buy their own supplies, but I wanted to give my son a chance to express himself with paint and mixed media. So, here are some of the projects that my kids 5 & 7 yrs old have been working on.

I followed the much-pinned tutorial for creating this flower & sun scene. A round sponge is used for the sun with yellow & white paint. A q-tip is used to create the flowers.

Over the summer, we went the the Dali museum in Florida. (http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/hair-raising-experience-at-the-dal237-museum/2189986)
So, in studying surrealist art, we did some collages, mainly set around Magritte's work. Putting things that don't belong together.