A simple portrait

A two minute time lapse on creating a simple portrait of an American Indian.

The Fall Painting

Below are a few steps about how this fall painting was created.

This is the photo (above) that Sarah took which I used as reference.

I started with a masonite board covered with Gesso, then applied a thin coat of burnt sienna for the base. The painting began very abstractly as most of my paintings do because in this way I can realized the large shapes and areas to create a pleasing flow of colors, values, and patterns. The acrylic colors I started with were Ultramarine blue, Napthol red, and Indian yellow. No white at this point.

The painting progressed and more variations within the large areas were added. Care was taken not to loose those large shapes I began with. At this point a bit of white was added to the upper left corner of the painting where the trees were going to be in the distance.

As refinements were made to the painting, negative areas of sky were added to establish the feeling of branches and tree trunks. I worked the entire painting and didn't spend too much time on any one area, in this way the painting can come together as a whole with less surprises of areas that may not work well with each other as the painting progressed. A few more colors were added to the palette at this point including Cadmium Red light, Cadmium Yellow light, Cerulean Blue, and Yellow Ochre.

As the painting began to take shape, Tree trunks were added and patches of leaves were worked into most areas to create more variations.

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HERE IS THE FINISHED PAINTING...

Building a Painting

 This painting was done in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here's a brief description of how I proceeded with this piece.The canvas was 24x28". I applied a wash of burnt sienna and maybe some burnt umber onto the canvas by simply spraying the canvas with an atomizer then squirting paint directly out of the tube onto the canvas and wiping it around to create a textured tone.

 I didn't feel the need to draw anything on the painting with charcoal or penci but rather began directly with my brush using dark tones.

 I built up the areas that had large shapes and values trying to create a pleasing pattern.

 I then began to add color using the cooler colors for the distant mountains. This blue doesn't look right next to the warm sky but you can see in the next picture that when the sky was applied above it, the blue fell into place.

Here I continued to refine the patterns and began to add detail to areas such as the tree on the left.

 Patterns of light and dark were established and in the finished piece below highlights and accents of color were added including sunlight on the road which gave a focus to the painting leading the eye down into the valley and the farm area.

Working from Photographs

When working from a photograph there are several very important things to keep in mind.

1. Compose your photo so you don't have a lot to rearrange when you start your painting. Working from a well composed photo will resolve a lot of your problems and you can better concentrate on painting and not rearranging your subjects and composition.
2. Use a monitor or a tablet such as an IPad to view your photo. You'll get a much better look at the colors by using it than you will be printing it on paper.
3. If you do print out your image to work from BE SURE AND USE PHOTO PAPER. Printing it on regular paper will give you a dull and practically useless reference to work from. Spend the few cents on paper and save yourself the aggravation of having to look at a poorly reproduced photo.
4. Keep in mind that a good photo will not always translate into a good painting.
5. Stay away from painting sunsets from photos. The colors in a photo will simply not be there for you in the reference photo with few exceptions. The camera is not very good at capturing the extreme lights and darks of a sunset.

Same Name - Different Color

When purchasing paint it is good to know that the same color manufactured by different companies are very often quite different. Below are two examples of Ultramarine blue. The Luiquitex and Windsor Newton are no where near the same even though they are both listed on the labels as Ultramarine. When mixing these two brands with a yellow to make green the results are startling different.

To confuse matters even more, some brands of Ultramarine blue are listed as reddish ultramarine, greenish ultramarine and so on. It's too bad there isn't some sort of standard but there isn't.

While teaching a workshop, I was using Liquitex Indian Yellow which is a transparent. A student had a tube of Indian Yellow from Cheap Joes and that brand was completely opaque and will of course give a totally different result.

Just beware of what you are buying and what the paint manufacturers are selling. It can get confusing.

The Art Market in the Stratosphere

Here's a piece produced by 60 Minutes about art markets and the high prices they seem to demand. Make of this what you will.
You'll have to wade through some commercials but it's an interesting look at the high end art market.
CLICK HERE to view.