Shades of Gray

I had the pleasure of leading a drawing workshop on Saturday at the Neilson Park Creative Centre in Etobicoke. "Shades of Gray" focused on using various drawing media on toned paper. The idea here is to use the tone of the paper as an overall mid-tone, and draw in the darks and the lights. This challenges our ingrained habit of filling a white sheet with dark marks to indicate form, often with interesting results.

The first exercise was the old "make a circle look like a sphere," using charcoal or carbon pencils, wax-based coloured pencils, and "white charcoal" pencil. (If anyone knows what goes into making General's White Charcoal pencils, I would be very interested)  From the very beginning I encouraged the group to use line for basic layout purposes, but ultimately to pay more attention to the value masses, and how the relative lights and darks interact next to one another.

The next challenge was to draw a carton of eggs, and I don't think it made me any new friends... This one really showed that this technique requires the artist to think differently about representing values. There were times when it was more advantageous to add white to the shadow area of the eggs, because the midtone of the paper was too dark!

After a short lunch break, things were a little more open, with each artist choosing their own subject matter from a selection of reference photos: flowers, a portrait, a landsape, a dilapitated old barn, etc. I demonstrated an ink-wash technique during this time.

The focus and concentration was very intense, and the group tried a number of techniques, including brush drawing, pen drawing, and coloured  and watercolour pencil, often in combinations. They were a tired bunch by the end of the day, but they all felt very pleased with the work they had produced.

I must apologize to some of the participants if their work was not included in the post - my camera let me down, and I lost about half the shots I took. I am very sorry.

Digital Figure Study

I continue to play around with painting in Photoshop, and I finally have a figure study I'm not embarassed to share. This is actually the third version of this image. I decided that I really needed to push the colour and texture a little to create a little more interest in an otherwise monochromatic painting, so I banged in some greens, blues and purples and massaged them into the original warm oranges and browns. A lot of this is experimenting and playing with the various brushes and settings that are available in Photoshop. I think it has a bit of that trashy paperback/pulp look from the 50s and 60s. Kinda fun...

My Fall painting class has started, so there should be some posts of acrylic landscapes again soon. But I'm not giving up on the digital world!

More Digital

I spent a few days either side of the Labour Day weekend on Georgian Bay, and I felt it was time to attempt a digital landscape painting. All I had to do was look out the window, after all... Really this is just a quick study, not a full landscape, but I'm getting a better painterly feel for the medium. It's still pretty rough around the edges, but it's coming.

The physical size is about 10x13 inches, so I was working at about 50% to fit the entire image on my monitor. This helps with the principle of working broadly at the beginning of a painting, getting the big shapes and value relationships early, and not looking too closely at detail too soon. In fact, there is not really any fine detail in this painting, I left it in a very sketchy (in places nebulous) state, as the detail illustrates.

There is likely enough here that I could increase the size of the "canvas" and spend another hour or two making a much more detailed finished painting, but that was not the intent of the exercise.

I'm pleased with how this is going, but with any luck I'll have a couple of more traditional painting classes starting in a couple of weeks, so there will be more acrylic demos to show. However, the digital isn't going away; you'll see more soon.

Different Strokes

Is painting in the digital realm still painting? I think so, and as I work to improve my skills  in that arena I will occasionally post my progress here. As an illustrator I have allowed myself to slip out of the mainstream, which is more and more digitally based. So, time to pull up my socks and get to work.

Actually, I have been working on this tangent in a fairly focused way for the past month, and I finally have an image I'm prepared to post.

This was produced in PhotoShop 7 with a Wacom Bamboo tablet. I only used the basic soft and hard brushes and the eraser tool. This is just a study, a sketch, but in the face I think I've managed to capture a real painterly quality.

I'll keep at it, and I hope the next post will have some colour in it. Cheers.

Water Miscible Oils

I've been playing a bit with water-miscible oil paint, also sometimes called water-mixable or water soluble. This is mostly due to concerns with using potentially harmful volatile solvents in a small, less-than-optimally ventilated studio. I've decided that I'm not convinced. There doesn't seem to be that much in the way of actual benefits, aside from the ease of clean up with soap and water. And I can do that with the M. Graham walnut-based oils anyway.

Washes done with water as solvent are really only practicable in the first layer of paint, and the wash doesn't look or feel anything like a turps or mineral spirit wash. You also want to be sure the water has completely evaporated before you start any overpainting, or you might compromise the paint layers. There are driers for these paints, but they are just as smelly and noxious as the alkyd driers for linseed oil paints. The cost is considerably less than most artist grade paint, more like student grade, so that makes one wonder about the longevity and quality of the products. So, the verdict from me seems to be: carry on in the old tradition, just be very careful with my solvent use.

This painting (9 x 12, masonite) was done with Lukas Berlin WMOs, which I got because they were on sale. There was a stickiness to the paint that was very uncomfortable, and when it had dried, the colour had sunk to a very matte finish over most of the surface. I'll use up the remaining paint, but I won't be eager to buy any more.

Black Out, Speak Out

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Veterum Non Immemor

I  recently spent an afternoon along the banks of the Credit River in Port Credit, ON, scouting potential painting sites. I had gone with a couple of places specifically in mind, but they left me somewhat disappointed. I sat for a while sketching ducks, geese and swans on the river, and prepared to head home. On my way to the station, I was struck by this scene.

"What?", you ask. Well, it's a small building, made of river stone and concrete. (The river is only about 300 meters away.) It's actually built into the side of a hill, the long-ago bank of the river. Behind it, on the top of the ridge, is a cemetary. I think this is a charnel house, the building where bodies were stored through the winter when the ground was frozen too hard to dig. And on the lintel is the inscription, which I did not attempt to render, "Veterum Non Immemor." I think a rough translation might be "the past is not forgotten," or something to that effect. Times like this I wish I'd taken high school Latin; if you can offer a more accurate translation I would appreciate it. I plan to do some research at the adjoining church to see if I can dig up a little history.

This is oil on a 9 x 12 panel. I think one of the things that really grabbed my attention was the strong contrast between the bright blue of the sky and the intense red of the bush, as well as the lost, half-forgotten, overgrown appearance of the structure. In the midst of a bustling village, it was somewhat lonely. I know the composition needs work, but this is one sketch that I really look forward to working up into a larger painting.