Efficient Painting

Red Apple, pastel demo - say it with as few strokes as possible!

How many brush strokes does it take to make a good painting? How many colors? While there is no definitive answer, the fewer the better if you want to keep your painting looking fresh and alive. There is nothing worse than an overworked painting, one that looks like it was hard to paint. A painting that jumps off the page with freshness and vitality is bound to grab the viewer’s attention.

To achieve this, practice painting efficiently. How? One exercise that might be very helpful is to take a limited number of colors (if working in oil or acrylic no more than 3 primaries plus white, if pastel, use no more than 10 sticks in total).  Use a 1/4″ flat or angled brush, or the side of the stick if you are working in pastel ( break your pastels into 1″ sticks). Block in your darks in a neutral color or in the complement to the predominant color of whatever you are painting. For a green apple, you  might use a red under painting, etc., or just use a neutral such as burnt sienna or umber.

Block in the values, and then beginning with your darks, begin blocking in color on top of the under painting. Be sure to think before you stroke–put down the right value of the right color in the right place the first time, and then leave it alone! Resist the urge to over blend. I don’t blend at all, I let colors overlap slightly where they meet to create a subtle transition, rather than a flat, over blending appearance. You are painting a painting, not creating a photograph–there is no need to blend everything into a gradually rendered transition. If you do choose to do some blending, make sure you don’t overdo it to the degree that everything ends up in the same value, this is a sure way to create muddy colors and flat forms!

Be sure to keep variations in color and temperature throughout the painting. Just as contrasting values create depth, contrasting temperatures create  believable lighting and make objects recede and come forward with atmospheric perspective.

Don’t automatically reach for the white when you need to add highlights or show turned form. Many times light and bright are confused, adding a brighter color will increase vibrancy, adding white will likely dull things down and make them chalky. White should be used carefully and sparingly.

To ensure that you don’t go overboard with overworking your paintings, try giving yourself a time limit for some studies. Force yourself to paint quickly and confidently, when the time is up, you’re done. Do these on a practice surface before a studio session with a real piece, it will help to prevent over working and get you used to knowing when to stop so that you don’t lose the freshness and vitality in your work.

Still Life from the Pantry

Still life demo of pantry items, acrylic on canvas, 10x7 in.

A still life does not need to contain elaborate items to be interesting. In fact, items from around the house can often be used to create dynamic, colorful still life compositions. I particularly like using items from the pantry, commercial packaging typically contains vibrant graphics and recognizable brand labels that can make an interesting, playful design.

The objects themselves are great for practicing your drawing skills: cylinders (cans), rectangular cubes (bread, boxes) and a variety of surface textures (metal, plastic and glass) are all represented in the goods stocked in the average pantry. Want to practice drawing ellipses? Do a still life of cans! The plastic on a bread bag contains wonderful contrasts and bright highlights. Glass and metal on jars and cans is always a challenge, painting them from life is the best way to improve your observational skills.

The geometric forms of the packaging also lend themselves to interesting, contemporary compositions. Use the geometrics to break up the space in a balanced manner.  Repeating shapes, colors and graphics are a great way to keep the eye moving and to prevent the viewer from becoming stuck or bored.

A still life does not always need to contain fruit and flowers! Be creative, there are items all around you that can make a unique and compelling set up.

The Food Pyramid for Painters

Most of us are familiar with the pyramid used to show the 4 basic food groups and their nutritional roles. I’ve done the same thing with the components of successful painting in the diagram above. The process of painting can be broken down into 4 components: drawing, composition, color and creativity. Each of these components is needed to produce an end result that is likely to be successful in terms of technical proficiency and expression–you have to have both of these in order to have a piece of “art”.

Drawing – the drawing is the structure of the painting, it must accurately depict what the artist is trying to represent, whether that is something that actually exists in real life, or an abstract concept that comes from the imagination. The artist must have a command of proportion, perspective, form and value in order to create the structure. Drawing can be done in any media–pencil, charcoal, or paint. Get the drawing right, and you have a good foundation to build upon, think of drawing as the bottom layer in the pyramid, the grains in the food pyramid. If you have good drawing skills, YOU are in control of how realistic you want to be, not the other way around.

Composition – the composition is what will keep viewers engaged in the painting. It needs to be balanced and dynamic to keep the eye exploring the piece without getting bored or stuck in one spot. It should support the mood of the painting, it can be busy or calm, containing resting areas for the eye as well as connecting points to keep the eye moving. Composition is key, therefore it is  also at the base of the pyramid, just above drawing–the subject needs to be depicted accurately and placed in the painting in a way that keeps the viewer engaged. In some respects, these first two layers are of equal weight and importance and the process of getting them on the canvas takes place in the first stages of the painting process. It is best to not go beyond the under painting stage until the composition and the drawing have been worked out to the artist’s satisfaction–in food terms, eat your grains and veggies first.. All the color and creativity in the world will not make a poorly drawn or poorly composed image successful.

Color – Color is a tool to be used for expression, it is not a necessity. I place color toward the top of the pyramid because I think of it as something that a painting should be able to exist without (think of all the great works done monochromatically). It would be like the meat, fish and dairy group, ok for some but you can live without it if you are a vegan. If an artist chooses to work in color, the color must be harmonious. Mud and garish contrasts should be avoided through a thorough understanding of color theory. If you are planning to work in color, take the time to understand color theory, make yourself a color wheel, know how individual pigments will mix with one another. If you are a beginner, start working with only the primaries and mixing all of your secondary colors. I RARELY use secondaries out of the tube, I prefer to mix all of my greens, oranges and purples. I find I get a much more natural looking color, as well as a more harmonious overall feeling to the painting.

Creativity – This is what will set your painting apart! It’s like dessert, the reward you’ve earned by doing all the hard work. In this case, dessert is something we can’t live without, because in order for your painting to be more than just an example of technical proficiency, it has to have that unique spark of creativity. The problem with just having the creativity and not the skills is that while you might have  great ideas and concepts, you won’t have the ability to successfully execute and communicate them. Logical understanding and hands on practice of the first three components is needed in order for the fourth component to come to fruition.

To get into top form with your painting:

• practice your drawing skills from life whenever possible
• think of objects purely as shapes and forms to divide up your composition in a balanced and dynamic manner
• understand color theory and how to work with color to create harmony and cohesiveness in your paintings
• don’t be afraid to be creative! break rules and experiment, that’s what it’s all about!

First Painting of the New Year

Into the Park - oil on board, done in studio based on pastel sketch, 18x12 in.

This is the first post in my new plan of posting weekly. I’m hoping that putting myself on a blogging schedule will help to build consistency in posting, we’ll see.

The painting above is my first to be completed in 2012. It’s a bit different for me in terms of subject matter. I’ve always been resistant to painting carriage horses, because the subject has been done many times before and also because I think it can get a bit sentimental.  However, I decided to challenge myself to take the subject and treat it the way I treat all my other urban landscapes. Simply as shapes that break up the space.

The title of the piece (Into the Park) is a bit more than just descriptive. I did some research about the carriage horses in Central Park and the surrounding area. There is a group that advocates that the horses not walk on the streets surrounding the park because they are a hazard to traffic and at risk of being injured. The group believes that the carriage rides should be restricted to the boundaries of Central Park. I totally support this idea. Just gathering reference material for the painting was a bit scary, dodging taxis and other traffic on Central Park South and 6th Avenue. Imagine how scary it must be for these horses? They really are beautiful animals, and part of a historic tradition, but in this day and age, they really don’t belong in the streets of midtown!

There is a group on Facebook that you can join if you support the idea of keeping the horses in the park and off the road. Here is a link to the group which is called NYC Horses Belong IN Central Park.

 

2012 is a good year to…

Carriage, studio study for a larger painting, pastel, about 6x9 in.

Instead of resolutions, I prefer to make plans! In 2012, my focus will be on plein air painting that goes beyond traditional plein air.  I want to use the process of painting on location to inject more abstraction into my urban landscapes. I plan to:

• paint on location in New York and Philadelphia, have an exhibit of the paintings in both cities
• conduct a plein air demo in NYC at the Salmagundi Club
• develop a plein air course for the summer at the Visual Arts Center of NJ
• lay the groundwork for a workshop and an exhibit in Europe or the UK
• further meld reality and abstraction in my paintings, take my studio painting in a new direction based on plein air studies
• continue to experiment with new media, including digital plein air
• turn this blog into a WEEKLY publication that is updated every Monday, consistency and deadlines are a good thing!

So what are your plans for 2012? Whatever they are, I wish you much health and happiness in the New Year!

Happy Holidays

King Street, Oldwick, NJ - plein air acrylic, 7x10 in.

Wishing you a happy holiday season! Thank you to all my students and collectors, this was a great year and I’m looking forward to 2012 with new ideas for workshops, classes and of course paintings. Have a great day with friends and family, make sure you take some time to do something you totally love!

All the best, Anne

If you want to be a better painter, practice your drawing skills

Cokesbury Road in the Rain - plein air greyscale pastel on grey PastelMat

To be a good representational painter–regardless of your style, photorealist, impressionist, semi-abstract–you need to have good drawing skills. When you can draw, you are in control. You’ll start out with a strong image, that you enhance with color. You won’t be struggling to “try” to get it right, you’ll confidently block it in and then move to color.

So many artists are so impatient to get to the color. Before you can effectively work in color, you have to have a firm understanding of the concepts of drawing: form, value, proportion and perspective. Without these, just getting your composition onto canvas can be a struggle.

Also, as painters, our definition of drawing needs to be flexible. Most people think of drawing as something you do only with a pencil. I never draw in pencil. I draw with the side of the charcoal or pastel, or I draw in ink or acrylic with a flat brush. Doing so allows you to block in forms rather than outlines, this enables you to really focus on values, carving out the forms with the various dark, middle and light tones. This is what gives the illusion of dimension, not detail, all the detail in the world will not make something that is drawn incorrectly look right.

Depending on how you want your painting to look, add in as much or as little detail as you feel is necessary. I prefer a semi-abstract look, where details are merely suggested, but the subject is immediately recognizable. Remember to block in the big shapes first, get the proportion and perspective right, and map in your values. Do this with a simple sketch everyday in charcoal and you’ll see the difference in your paintings very quickly!

Composition is Key

Church Street, Oldwick, NJ - plein air pastel, about 9x12 in.

Composition is a key element to any successful painting. The painting has to work as a whole, no matter how great the rendering or use of media, if it doesn’t hold together with a balanced composition, it won’t work.

When painting plein air, you must work out your composition before you start putting anything down on paper. To start, you have to have something to draw the viewer in–anything with a strong sense of perspective, particularly one point perspective, will do this. Think of streams, roadways, telegraph poles and wires, trees, anything that defines the space with perspective will draw the viewer into the painting. Once there, the eye needs connecting points in order to be motivated to explore the painting. Repeating shapes and colors are great for this. It also presents the artist with an opportunity to be creative and expressive–if you need a bit of yellow in the upper right to balance the yellow elsewhere, put it in whether it is there or not in real life.

Think of the format of your painting as space that needs to be divided geometrically. Look for alpha forms such as “Z”‘s or “L”s to create a strong division of space and movement. Forget about “what” you are painting and look purely at forms made by light, shadow, color and values. Rather than painting trees, block in shapes that are created from a mass of leaves.

The painting above was done in pastel, which is a great medium for plein air. I first block in the comp monochromatically with a hard pastel, then I lay in the values with that same color. Once I have the comp and values blocked in, I go to color working from dark to light.

This piece was done in about an hour. Working plein air trains your eye to see things quickly and accurately. The light WILL change while you are working, that is why blocking in the values and staying loose is so crucial to plein air. You can’t noodle around with your drawing, be very gestural and get in the big shapes, you can put in as much or as little detail as you feel is needed once you have the big picture laid out.

“You’re So Prolific!”…ummm no, I’m not

Rockaway Road Barns, Tewksbury, NJ, plein air pastel, 9x12 in.

I hear this all the time. But I’m not prolific, I just practice a lot, the same as any artist needs to do if they are painting professionally. I don’t offer every sketch I do for exhibit or sale, but I need to sketch, paint or draw EVERY DAY in order to keep my technical skills where they need to be.

Just because I post a sketch here or on my Facebook page, it doesn’t mean it’s a formal painting that will go to a gallery. In fact, most of the studies I post are just that–ideas being worked out for future paintings, or experiments in color and form. Many of them end up just hanging around my studio until they get worn out looking and I have to get rid of them. Others (the nicer ones that are in good condition) I will give to collectors who purchase my larger works.  It’s nice for the collector to have the study along with the final painting.

If you want to build your confidence and skill, practice is the only way to do it. I have to paint in front of students all semester long, I wouldn’t be able to do my demos if I didn’t practice and have confidence in my approach to drawing and painting. So, while I might appear to be prolific, I am really just doing what it takes to stay in top form, it’s just like going to the gym.

Come to Philly on Friday, Dec. 16

Philadelphia - oil on canvas, 8x10 in.

If you are in Philadelphia this Friday, Dec. 16, be sure to stop in at JAG Fine Art  for their holiday party from 6 – 9 pm. I’ll have a few new small paintings of Philly (such as the one above) plus large urban landscapes of NYC.  JAG is located at 1538 Pine Street, Center City Philadelphia.

While I’m in town, I hope to do some plein air sketches for some new large works.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate!