Composition Lesson

Still Life Composition Lesson and More Buttons

This morning in class we talked about the placement of objects on our paper.  Not the right or wrong placement of objects, but how they relate to one another spatially.

The lower left pencil drawing was just drawing things as they were  -  no arranging or composing.  We just drew what we saw, how we saw it.  We were trying to place things up and down the picture plane showing the volume of the objects  -  that is, making sure they would really fit where we put them.

The top left watercolor is just a very quick, three object still life, sketched only with watercolor  -  no preliminary drawing.  It was a salt shaker, a bottle of ink, and a spool of thread.  This exercise was to get the objects in place without fussing at all with any detail.

The buttons are just more buttons.  This is the beginning of a new session, and some of the students hadn't had a  chance to see the button demo or try it for themselves.  These buttons could become habit forming.

I see I am really behind with replies to comments.  I LOVE your comments, and I will get right at it!

Day Eighteen

A Pile of Paintings

I have a pile of paintings that need to be framed, so I ordered frames today, and will give the measurements to my husband so he can cut the mats and glass.  There's one thing off my to-do list. And onto his.

I also sent out and posted the information for upcoming classes.  Another thing off the list. 

And then I went to the grocery store.  That never really gets off the list,does it?  While I was standing in the check-out line, a customer came up to me and asked if I wanted the coupon she had for $4.50 off $55 worth of groceries.  Sure!  How nice.

My friend, Karen, called, laughing hysterically. She was at a fund raising bingo event and had won a turkey.  There is something pretty funny about playing bingo for a turkey  -  and winning.  I mean does anyone even play bingo anymore?  Well, I'm not knocking it  -  because she can't use the turkey, it is now in our fridge and will be coming here to dinner. I guess that should be AS dinner, not TO dinner.  Thanks, Karen!

Are you sketching?  Sketch some of the things you bring home from the grocery store, and some of the pretty dishes we all dig out of the cupboards this time of year.  It only takes a minute or two to do a contour drawing.

Day Sixteen

A Simplified View Along the Shoreline

11 X 15 Watercolor

When I did this painting, I kept in mind my reason for painting it.  It wasn't to render the cottage in detail, but to show the color of the cottage and the way it sets along the shoreline of the lake.  There was another cottage to the left that I had put in the sketch, but it really didn't add anything to the composition.  The simpler, the better.

If this had been a commission, it would have been another story.  I would have paid attention to the detail of the red cottage, and I would have done the setting differently.  In other words, I would have shown a bit of the cottage next door to give the red cottage a sense of place in the "neighborhood".

We had some snow and sleet late this afternoon  -  enough to stick on the rooftops.  It may still be there, but I'm not looking.  It's almost Thanksgiving, which means it will start snowing seriously any day now.  That's okay  -  we don't have hurricanes, earthquakes, floods .   .   .    A couple of years ago I did some winter landscapes.  That was fun.  Maybe I'll do some this year.  No, I don't do them on location.  I've said it before  -  I'm all about comfort.

Day Fourteen

Peppers and Wine

and some of my favorite things  -  garlic, lime, lemon, and fresh herbs.

This is a painting I did for an auction with a wine and food theme at the art center this past summer .  It was about six by six inches, matted twelve by twelve.

Here we are, nearly half way through the blog-everyday-in-November thing and I don't seem to be gathering momentum, do I?  It was a busy day, okay?  I was trying to get a couple of pieces of furniture second coated to get them out of the way, I did my afternoon of volunteering at the flower shop, my husband came home feeling crummy with a cold, our middle granddaughter is spending the night and had a lot of homework and needed help.  How can they possibly think I am the one to help with the math!!??  I'm going to put a sign on the back door  -  "please take off your shoes and leave your math homework on the back porch".  Just kidding about the shoes.

Oregano

A Pot of Oregano and Some Planning

I wanted to do a quick little sketch of this bright pot before I planted it.  I know it's better off in the garden, but it sure was cute in its bright red container.

This past weekend we did a lot of yard work and the weather was great. It's in the 40s today.  We built some raised garden beds for my cutting garden and a small herb garden.  I did a ton of weeding, "staked out" my birdhouses (shown in the previous post), planted my perennial herbs, bought a truck load of garden soil .  .  .

I'm  getting things crossed off my summer to-do list.This morning I went over to the Terrace Inn and we planned the second annual "Afternoon Tea" with watercolor journaling.  The place is beautiful, the food is delicious (and pretty!), the service is wonderful, and we all take just a few art supplies and paint up a storm.  I will be posting the details very soon.

Now I think I'll go paint my ORANGE petunias.  I know, a purist would say petunias shouldn't be orange, but I say Wow! - fun! - orange petunias!  Just don't be altering my food!

Birdhouses

Colorful Little Birdhouses

What fun  -  I got to paint them twice.  Once to really, you know, paint them, and then illustrate them in my sketchbook.  They were a dollar apiece.  That's pretty cheap entertainment. And see, they gave me something to blog about to make up for the previous post's glass of water.
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I may put them on the fence  -  maybe the side of the garage  -  or maybe plant them in the garden on a stake.  Maybe that's a little tacky, but .  .  .

It's raining again and in the 40s.  I am craving sunshine and color!!!  I keep plugging away at my to-do list, getting ready for summer, and those birdhouses were actually on my to-do list.  I have a fun list, don't I?

The Process

 

Class Demo

This demonstration was to show the process I use to get from, in this case, a photograph to a finished painting.  The top image shows the photograph I was using as reference. In the pencil sketch below that,  I have sketched things pretty much as is   -  because I have to start somewhere. I'm keeping in mind the reason that I have chosen to paint this subject  -  the cluster of buildings and their rooftops, and the lights and darks of the sunlight and cast shadows.

The porches and roof lines on the left really complicate things and don't do anything to support my reasons for painting this.  So I play around a little with removing the jumble of shapes on the left, and move on to a value sketch (figuring out my lights and darks) which is shown in the lower right of the top image.  This is what I use as reference as I paint.  I don't refer to the photograph again. 

Eliminating some of the porches and roof lines has changed the "reality", but what I wanted was the "feeling" of the roof tops and shadows.  This would never make it as a commission or a rendering of the actual scene, but we all have artistic license, you know, and we should use it.  It's fun!

Value sketches can be done very small  -  a couple of inches square with no detail - just shapes to show light, middle and  dark values.  If you make them small enough and simple enough, you can do lots of them in a short time to play around with all kinds of combinations of lights and darks until you hit on the one you like.   Once you've planned your lights and darks, your painting is half done.  The process is pretty painless.

More Orchid Studies

Orchid Blossoms in Pencil (left) and Watercolor and Ink (right)

I'm loving the way orchid blossom petals fit together, and how subtle the shadows have to be to keep them white, but still show the gentle curves.  Fun.

In my state of "unmotivation", I can't seem to complete anything serious - anything larger than a sketchbook page.  So I guess I'll just stick to my sketchbook for awhile.

Now I am off to set up a still life for my afternoon class.  We will be working on simplicity and draped fabrics.  I even ironed the fabrics!

Painting from Photographs

  The Old Lansing City Market

This is a demonstration I started in class, and they asked if I could finish it next week, but I don't think I can keep my hands off it.  I could hide it so I am not tempted.  Kind of like sending the potato chips to work in the trunk of my husband's car.

I'm working from a photograph that I took a couple of years ago before they tore the old (beautiful  -  to me) buildings down and rebuilt. With the photograph as reference I did a contour sketch including only the things I felt were necessary to say what I want to say about this particular scene.  I scanned the sketch, enlarged it, printed it out and traced it onto my watercolor paper.

I'm using the sketch as my reference now, not the photograph.  I have pretty much blocked in my lights and darks, and those are more important to me than the colors.  At this point, the photograph has more information than I want.

It's Friday already!  Who has some sketching plans for the weekend?

Petunias

Watercolor Petunias

Here it is November and I am painting petunias.  This was a painting I had started as a demo in a summer class.

I started a new eight-week session today that will actually run into January because of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.  We are going to be paying close attention to composition and enjoy the process that takes us to a finished painting.  We are going to do a lot of thumbnail sketches and value studies, and take our time to get things just the way we want them before we ever touch brush to paper.  This is hard for those of us who are into instant gratification (ME?).  You  notice I said "enjoy the process" - it is actually fun to plan, draw, and work out a color scheme.  I often rush into a painting and miss out on the fun of doing the preliminary steps.


The painting above was started on location, with little planning, except the negative shapes. When I got to a certain point, I really didn't know how to finish it.  When I pulled it out again, I played a lot with the lights and darks and shadow colors and it began to come together.  Not the best way for me to come up with a finished painting, but that is the way I work on location and in my sketchbooks.  I save the "enjoyable process" for winter painting in the studio.

Three days into "blog everyday for a month".  So far so good  -  on my end anyway  -  I'm having fun.

Sunflowers

Color Mixing

Last week's classes painted sunflowers, paying special attention to color mixing.  We used quinacridone red, ultramarine blue, and new gamboge (yellow). For the top row of blossoms, we mixed the brown for the centers by first mixing the primaries on the palette and then dropping in a little purple after the brown center had been painted . The next one was brown mixed on the palette, and the third was mixed on the paper.  As always, we found the color mixed on the paper to be much more interesting and less muddy.  Mixing on the paper gives you less control, but the results are more pleasing. Well, that's my opinion.  The centers of the flowers in the small painting, bottom right, were done by letting the colors mix on the paper.

This week I am doing a bookbinding workshop  -  "team teaching" with my friend Cathy.  The sketchbooks were finished today in record time, and they are all absolutely beautiful!  Tomorrow we will unveil them (they are under heavy weight over night) and begin to paint. I LOVE MY JOB!

O'Donnell Lane Again

A Small but Serious Painting of O'Donnell Lane, Glen Ellen, CA

A "serious" painting means it was done on watercolor paper and not in my sketchbook. I think I like my sketchbook version of it better.

I used Google Maps Pegman Streetview to do the sketch and also for some reference for this painting. One of my commenters on the sketchbook post said that she was making Pegman her new best friend. I'm in love with Pegman too - we have even gone to Paris together.

Yesterday we went to an open house for a friend that just finished a sculpture that will ship out this week. I love it when people celebrate accomplishments large and small. This was large! How often do we let achievements go by without notice? Sometimes we don't even recognize an achievement when we see one. We need all the celebrations we can get!

Color Demo

Quick demos - not even pretending to be finished paintings.

What I was trying to show here was how we can unify shapes in a painting by carrying colors around the composition. The primary colors on the left show how I put all three primaries in each shape to "pull" the shapes together. The example on the right, done pretty much in secondary colors, shows the same principle - there is pink in the oranges, and orange in the pink flowers. This keeps our eye traveling around the painting instead of zeroing in on one color and then another. Maybe we could call this "unity and flow".

I think a flat color is a flat shape. I am conscious of this in every painting I do. I'm not always conscious of anything else, but what the heck.

Snowsnowsnow

Another Local Snow Scene.

We have only had light snow for the last few days. Enough to keep the old snow white and clean.

This is a watercolor, 11 X 15, on Arches cold press paper. I started this painting as a demo for class, but I really botched the center evergreen. I had the area too wet - I went into the sky too soon with the tree color, and the spaces I had wanted to leave white for the snow on the branches ended up being greenish brown. Yuk. It made the whole demo a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of thing.

Just as a challenge I wanted to save the painting, so I scrubbed the snow on the tree to lighten it up a little, then I painted some other areas of the snow the same color. I think it worked out okay.

This week I will try not to botch the demo. But if I do, I will try to make lemonade out of the lemons. Yes, it is a still life - citrus fruit and tulips.

It Takes a Village

Sun on the Snow Between Cottages

I've really been struggling with this one. I just couldn't seem to be objective about it and see what was right and what was wrong (it's the "wrong" that's important), but with a little help from my friends, I think I have it. Thanks for your opinions - I do appreciate them.

This is a watercolor done on a quarter sheet (11 X 15) of Arches 140 cold press. I am really having fun with these snow subjects. Painting snow paintings, reading Jack London, and making sketchbooks seem to be my obsessions of the season. Not too exciting, am I?

Update on my quirky life: the big guy on my speed dial (the tow truck guy) took care of the flat tire on my truck, the big guy I live with ( my husband) took care of the electricity to the bathroom, and in a couple of days he will hook up the bathroom sink. It's no big deal ~ I usually brush my teeth at the kitchen sink looking out the window anyway. I can not stand there brushing for two minutes in a closed up bathroom! I don't know what that has to do with anything, so here I go to work on a sketch for tomorrow's class.

San Francisco

The Gardens at Grace Cathedral,
San Francisco

I posted this painting in progress a few posts back. I think it is finished - I will have to live with it a few more days to be sure.

I'm catching up a bit on real life today - painting, grocery shopping, doing laundry, cleaning the fridge, attending 7th grade basketball.

It is snowing here tonight. Seriously snowing. This will get me feeling Christmasy, and that's a good thing.

Thanks for hanging in there with me for 30 days of blogging. Although I missed a couple, I was thinking about you!

Glen Ellen Street Scene

Glen Ellen, California
Three different versions of the same view.

I have already posted the two paintings, and I always think it is fun to compare a photograph of a location with my sketchbook version. The sketchbook version is always the closest to how the place really felt to me. The "serious" paintings are always a little too "dressed up".

In my sketchbooks a few little marks can remind me later of how a place smelled, felt, sounded (tasted, but I'm trying not to blog about food all the time) and how I REALLY thought it looked. A snap shot is just that - a SNAP shot. It just doesn't take long enough for me to engage all the senses.

Carrying a sketchbook around (and PAINTING in it) is such an enjoyable part of my life! It enriches everything. When your life influences your art, your art influences your life - or something like that.

Just paint - you don't even have to show anyone. But you'll probably want to.

In Progress

Grace Cathedral Garden Painting in Progress

I'm working on this from a journal sketch I did in California. I have a lot of students asked what the process is from sketchbook to watercolor paper. There are various ways to do it - one is, of course, to just draw it again, but that never works for me. Because I was pretty happy with the composition of the journal watercolor sketch, I simply traced the important shapes onto a piece of tracing paper, scanned it, enlarged it to the size of the wc paper, and printed it out (a copy shop will do this for you too), then traced it onto the watercolor paper.
Before I started to paint, I worked out all the light, dark, and middle values on the enlarged sketch. It is very easy to trace a sketch onto wc paper at a window or on a lightbox. The watercolor paper is much more transparent than you might guess.

Okay, here I go. I'm still working on that to-do list (they aren't supposed to END, are they!?) and we're having guests for dinner tonight. I am trying a maple glaze on chicken breasts - we'll see how that goes.

Figs and Produce

Glen Ellen, CA

This painting was done from the journal sketch I posted a few days ago. It's a watercolor done on Arches 140 cold press, 11" X 15". After I photographed the painting, I grayed down the fence in the background to set it back a little more.

I could almost smell the eucalyptus trees as I painted this. The scent is very strong in this area of California.

I accomplished quite a bit today ~ mailed out the summer schedule for the Bay View publication, delivered my card order ~ even went to the grocery store! ETC. I have been blobbing around for so long, that it feels good to be catching up. Of course the blobbing felt good too.

Lemons and Peppers

Multiple Views of a Still Life

In yesterday's class we set up a still life, divided our paper into four rectangles, and painted four different views of the still life. I was a little sick of it by the time I got to the fourth painting ~ the top left. I may try this again someday. The whole idea is to zoom in, zoom out, pan left, pan right . . . . I think I could have zoomed a little more and panned a little less.

Next week the class wants to do very quick paintings, just a few minutes each, using autumn related objects such as pine cones, leaves, squash, gourds, pears.

We had a pretty heavy frost last night. Goodbye summer. As always, fall is bringing out my nesting instincts, and I have been switching my upstairs studio space (which never really worked out up there) back downstairs. I think I had better make a few trips to the Salvation Army/Goodwill to get rid of all this stuff I don't know what to do with. My new philosophy is "if I don't know where to put it, I certainly don't need it". I know that this philosophy is not new to some of you. We'll see how this works out.