Before starting the Abstract Paintings

To begin a painting; an exercise

Step 1. Mix 3 to 4 generous piles of colors that you like the way they look together.  They must be YOUR colors, not straight from the tube.  At least one must be highly chromatic, and at least one must have low chroma.  Also, two of the colors must be relatively close in value with the third offering a marked value contrast to the other two.

Step 2. Using one of your new colors, make a relatively large organic shape away from the center of your canvas.  Completely fill that shape in with as few marks as possible.  Use plenty of paint.

Step 3. Using the same color as above, make a large, single balancing mark on the other end of the canvas

Step 4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 with your second color, but the shape and mark of the second color should differ in scale and shape from the first

Step 5. Repeat Steps 2-4 with the third color.

Final Steps.  Repeat above as needed using variations of the original colors in order to achieve balance and resolution to the painting.  Never use the exact same color—variation possibilities are infinite! USE PLENTY OF WET, GUSHY PAINT!!!!

Assignment #4: Abstraction

The making of a successful abstract painting is not as much creating or making a painting as it is finding it.  A successful abstract painting is said to be resolved.  The process of resolving a painting can be unexpectedly quick, or excruciatingly slow.  It demands brutal self honesty and patience, and it cannot be crammed.  An abstract painting has a mind of its own that must be coaxed, not forced.  For a painting to be resolved, EVERY element of it must mesh and balance well with EVERY OTHER element.  It must simply work.

Decide on the elements of painting that you are interested in—Color? Line? Shape? Ab-ex spontaneous marks? Minimalist hard edged marks?  Something else? 

You are to make two (2) abstract paintings: an Ab/Ex inspired one and a Hard Edged one.  Build formal compositions that are not recognizable as any specific subjects, but that utilize the elements of painting in which you are interested. Simply make paintings that are resolved AND that you like the way they look.

Ab/Ex painting: you are to embrace the process and aesthetic of the Ab-Ex (Abstract Expressionist) action painters.  You are to use thick, spontaneous, gushy “passionate” brush marks that resolve into a balanced, heavily worked painting.  Let the painting dictate each move (see the associated exercizes). Minimum size is 24x30.

Hard Edged painting: you are to embrace the minimalist aesthetic and design a hard-edged abstract painting.  This painting will necessarily be much more planned out.  The paint surface may or may not be layered and heavily worked.  Like the Ab-Ex, this painting is to be resolved, but the manner in which you do it will differ.  This is not an action painting. It will demand a lot more designing on your part.  DO NOT simply settle for the first solution that comes to mind.  Instead, find the best one.  For this one there are no size restrictions.  In order to help you come up with the best design, you are to make at least three different design compositions in your sketchbook using dry media. Once you’ve finished at least three, choose the best one to make into the painting, but try not to choose until the three are fully finished.

Look at Modern and Contemporary Masters who paint(ed) abstractly: Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffmann, Brice Marden, Cy Twombley, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and one of my personal favorites, Richard Diebenkorn.  Remember that honesty is most important.  A painting either works or it doesn’t.  Keep working on your painting until it is resolved. Don’t call it finished if it’s not. No matter how much you might want an apple to be an orange, it’s still an apple.

Hints

Experiment.  Embrace accidents.  An abstract painter might have no idea what the final result will look like.  Try not to have an image in your head that you’re working toward.  Instead, let the painting decide what needs to happen next.

Asignment #3: Landscape

You are to make two landscape paintings in oil that are at least 8x10, and no larger than 16x20.

This project is all about making space—or the illusion of it.  It’s also about controlling color relationships in terms of contrast and “chromatic hygiene” (high contrast advances low contrast recedes, and clean color advances and broken color recedes).

Utilize the strategies to create space that we went over in class during the analysis exercises. However, before you start each painting, you must make a value drawing of the composition.  Make sure it is balanced.  Even though the emphasis of this project is about color control, you can often solve color problems by reducing them to value problems.  You will show me your value drawings at the beginning of next week and when we critique the paintings.

One of the paintings must be predominantly buildings or constructed objects.  The natural landscape should be non-existent. The other one should be predominantly natural landscape with a minimum of human intervention. Other than that, the subjects may be of anything as long as they are (mostly) outside and include close foreground, middle ground and infinite space.  You may work from photos, or you may work from life. If you work outside from life (the preferred way of working for many landscape painters), you will find that the light will change--the sun tends to move if you hadn’t noticed--during the time you are working, so you have to paint quickly and plan to come back to the same spot at the same time for two or more days.  I’d suggest making either a sunny day painting or a cloudy day painting if you choose a daytime painting.  If you start a painting sunny and finish it cloudy you will drive yourself crazy and you’ll end up with a confusing result.  Trust me!

I strongly encourage you to choose a moment in your painting to be what the painting is about, and then make everything else in the painting merely support that moment.   Don’t just paint a scene.  Also, don’t make a “pretty” painting.  “Pretty” is bad. 

Hints

*Remember the different ways to create the illusion of space:

1-clean colors advance, and broken colors recede.

2-high contrast and hard edges advance, low contrast and soft edges        recede.

3-saturated colors advance, less intense colors recede

*Squint a lot.  This will force you to simplify. 

*Don’t forget your drawing skills.  Make sure your perspective works.

*Values tend to be very high outdoors.  The sun tends to eat away the darks and we find that they are relatively light (though still darker than the lights).  What at first glance seems like a value contrast might be more of an intensity contrast or temperature contrast.

*Research ideas from the old or contemporary masters—try to paint like them!

*Lastly, decide your approach BEFORE the painting begins, and stick to it (which of the four? Or a hybrid?)!

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From now on we will do business through Bb.  Check out what's there and I'll post the next project later this week. Stay safe, healthy and SANE!
Kyle

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Assignment #2: 4 Approaches to Painting the Still-Life

Four different Approaches to Painting   ART130

Stevenson, Professor

Due Feb 26

This series of projects is to be worked on both at home and in class over next several weeks.  You are to use the big 18x24 sectioned-out canvas board in class, but at home you are to use two of your 9x12 canvas boards from your supply list.

During class I will introduce you to each of four different approaches to constructing an observational painting.  In class you will go through the steps taken to implement each approach by making a painting of one of the simple still-lifes that we will set up in class.  You are then to bring home your supplies and newfound knowledge to choose two of the approaches to make two simple still-life paintings that you set up at home.  There are four approaches that we will do in class, but you must choose the two that make the most sense to you and make a painting utilizing each of those two approaches. 

Though you will make a total of 6 still-lifes, only the two that you do at home will be graded by more than just pass/fail.  The in-class paintings are therefore “practice paintings.”  These home paintings are due three weeks from now on Feb. 26.

1. The Approaches

Approach #1--Indirect painting

You are to make a grisaille (pronounced grizz-eye) of the still life.  Use only ivory black and titanium white.  Mix a middle gray (err on the light side) to be the darkest value, and render the still life using the tonal range from that middle gray to white. Be sure to keep your values on the high side, and keep things simple.  Detail can be articulated later.  When the grisaille has dried fully, glaze over each object with the appropriate color.  Using this stage as a point of departure, seek to finish the painting by finding areas that need more of a mixed color or direct approach.

Approach #2—Direct approach using directly mixed color

This approach is very simple.  After making a detailed drawing using a hard pencil (this should take you much longer than the other drawings, and works best if you think of it as a “paint by number”), simply mix and paint the still life directly. There should be one layer of paint—not two or three as in all the other approaches.  There is no restriction on the use of white or any other color.  Simply determine what the final perceived color is by taking into account the local color and the color of the light.  I suggest starting somewhere in the middle of the composition and expanding out from there.  Simple, but not easy!

Approach #3—Direct approach on imprematura ground

Cover a clean panel with a layer of middle gray oil paint (get it into ALL the nooks and crannies of the panel). Do not cut the paint with any mineral spirits, though you may mix in a tiny bit of Liquin to speed the drying time. When the panel is covered, wipe off as much paint as possible.  The result will be more of a stain than a layer of paint.  This is called a ground color, or imprematura.  Do not start this approach until the gray imprematura ground is completely dry.  Loosely block in the drawing using a hard pencil.  Then, using a warm, dark color, block in the general dark shapes.  This approach demands that the painting be separated into darks (usually warm), middle tones (usually cool), and lights (usually warm).  Once the darks are blocked in with transparent warm colors, mix the more opaque middle tones and lights and block them in.  Wherever the color of the ground is correct just leave it showing through.

Approach #4—Indirect approach using “custom” imprematura

Using a hard pencil, loosely block in the drawing on a clean, white panel.  Then, making sure to USE NO WHITE PAINT(because it makes colors opaque and grayish looking), directly block in the appropriate colors using mineral spirits washes (hint: be sure to be accurate, taking into account reflected light as well as local color, but always err on the colorful side.  In other words, if you see a hint of a color, bring it out as much a possible).  If a color is very light, make the wash very transparent, using the white of the canvas instead of mixing tints.  Once all the white of the canvas is covered and the washes are finished to your satisfaction, then you may mix opaque colors to cover the parts of the washes that do not work.  Be sure the let the wash color show if it turns out to be the right color.  Note the way the wash color seems very luminous and intense compared to the mixed opaque colors.  Use these relation-ships to your advantage!

2. At Home Still-Lifes

For each of your at home paintings, like our paintings in class, you are to set up a simple, colorful subject.  Think of these as serious paintings though; not as mere class exercises.  Your goal is to make successful paintings that you would want to look every day.  To that end, you are to follow the list of rules below as a roadmap to successful paintings.

The Rules:

• The objects that you choose to paint (also called the subject) must somehow be related
• You must make sure that you paint LIFE SIZE or larger
• Set it up so that you have a strong light source, and always paint at the same time of day.
• Your subject must be at or just below the viewer’s eye level.
• Do not crop (or even crowd) your objects, though they may overlap each other.  Choose a subject small enough to fit easily on your 9x12 support, and arrange the subject to justify your rectangle shape.
• Before you begin each painting, you are to make a fully rendered value drawing in your sketchbook.  This must fill a sketchbook page while keeping consistent with the shape of the painting.  Your composition should be well balanced.  In this format you can solve many problems before the first brushstroke.

Helpful hints

• I’ll show you some images, but take some time to research some artists on your own that specialized in, or otherwise mastered, still life painting.  Try to paint like them. Fairfield Porter, Janet Fish, William Bailey, Chardin, De Heem, Caravaggio, Emil Carlson, Tom Buechner, Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Georgia O’Keefe, Picasso, Giorgio Morandi. . .all come to mind.  Ask yourself: “How would they do it?”

• Feel free to bring your partially finished paintings into class for feedback before the due date (which is Feb 26).

Notes on Color

THE NATURE OF COLOR

Painting I

Stevenson

Color breaks down into three parts:

1.                   Value—the lightness or darkness of a color; how close is it to black or white?

2.                   Hue—the title of a color: yellow, red, blue, brown, etc.

3.                   Chroma—the strength or intensity of a color; also called saturation.

So, if any one of these elements changes from one color sample to another, then those two colors are technically not the same.  For instance, if the value and hue are the same, but the chroma is slightly more or less, then the colors being compared are different.   In the same way, two colors can actually be closer in nature than they initially appear by having the hue and chroma similar but the value much different.

Black and White

It is also important to note that black and white hues theoretically do not have chroma, only value.  Therefore they cannot be considered true colors (even though we tend to refer to them as such).  A color mixed with black is called a shade, color mixed with white is called a tint, and color mixed with a combination of black and white (achromatic gray, explained below) is called a tone.  The nice thing about black and white not being true colors is that a tint or a shade of any color is a change to that color’s value without changing that color’s hue.  It will also change the color’s intensity/chroma by diluting the pigment in the paint, and therefore making it less chromatically saturated or intense.  The density of a pigment suspension in oil paint is pretty much directly related to that color’s intensity.   Because of this, a color is at its highest intensity straight out of the tube, so a color mixed from two different pigments cannot be as chromatic as the pigments on their own.

Chroma at Value

Another thing that you must be aware of is that each hue reaches its highest intensity at a different value.  Yellow is at its highest saturation at a very high key, whereas blue and violet are at their highest at a very low value.  Green, I think, is surprisingly high, similar to orange, which are both a little higher than red (though not much).  Earth tones tend to come from either broken prismatic (pure) colors or dark shades of high key hues.

It is worth noting that as shades of yellow darken—with more black added—the color that results looks green, even though the hue is still technically  yellow and hasn’t changed at all.  As more black is added to orange—without changing the hue—it gets brown.

Grays

There are basically two types of grays: “achromatic” grays and “chromatic” grays.  Achromatic grays are literally grays without any color, that is, they don’t have hue and very little intensity, only value.  They are grays made by mixing black and white.  Chromatic grays are, not surprisingly, grays with color, or grays that involve mixing complimentary colors (and possibly white and/or black).  The range of chromatic grays is almost infinite, and a color is considered a chromatic gray as long it is at least slightly broken, or mixed with a compliment.  You can have a color that is mixed with equal parts of red and green to make a very broken color that is close to the center of the color wheel, or one made of very unequal parts closer to the edge of the color wheel.  For instance, any blue that has even the slightest bit of orange in it is really a chromatic gray, because it is at least slightly broken by the orange.  It could still look extremely blue, especially if it’s put up against a much more broken or contrasting color, but it is a “gray” nonetheless.  So, paintings that look intensely colorful are often merely made up of chromatic grays.

Assignment #1 Color Chart

ART 130 Painting I

Assignment #1 Color mixing

Stevenson, professor

You are to make a color chart illustrating the three parts of color: chroma, hue, value.  Use the posted “Color Notes” for reference, if needed.  Divide an 18x24 canvas board into six equal sections. Each section belongs to either one of the primary or secondary colors (red, yellow, blue, green, purple, orange). On the left side of each labeled section, lightly draw two vertical columns of roughly one half inch squares (see example page 1).

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In the left hand vertical column of each section, mix an even step sequence of ten gray tones from off white to off black and place it in order.  The lightest tone should be on top and the darkest tone should be on the bottom.  In all, make 6 identical gray tonal scales—one in each section as described on example page 4.  To the right of each gray tonal scale there should be a blank vertical column

 (These will be the color columns).  Be sure to mix enough of each gray to fill in the left columns in all six sections.  By the beginning of class next week you are to get up to this point.  If you do not have the value columns finished you will not be able to get an A on this project.

Once the gray scales are completed, compare the corresponding pure hue (cadmium red light, cobalt blue, etc.) to the gray scale and decide which box most closely resembles the value of the pure hue.  For example, Cadmium Yellow Light has a very high value and will therefore be placed near the top of the gray scale, whereas Cobalt Blue is much darker and will be much placed much lower on the column.  In each color column, fill in the box next to the correct value with the pure hue.  As described on example page 5, mix the appropriate tints or shades of each color to match the ascending or descending values of the gray tonal scales next to each color tonal scale.

On the right side of the color column in each section construct a row of the appropriate number of (4 to 8) connected squares of similar size attached to where you decided to put the pure color block (see example page 2).  Construct a second row of squares unattached to the vertical stack in the open space to right of the columns. Use the same number of blocks as in the example.  Be sure each unattached row has the same number of squares as its attached counterpart. 

Now, at the value where each pure color finds itself to be the highest chroma, attach the horizontal row (mentioned above) and mix a row of tones in descending order from the highest chroma to neutral chroma.  Be sure that the value of these tones remains constant.

So far, the hues within each section have not changed at all—only the value and the intensity of the colors.

In the remaining unattached row of boxes you are to start with the pure color on the left, and then make a gradation of steps of descending chroma (but constant value) by “breaking” both the hue and intensity of the color by using the appropriate color complement (for example, in the red section gradually mix in green to eventually make a neutral color—but be sure to do it in the correct number of steps).  In sections where this will also affect the value of the resulting color, use the tint or shade of the complement that most closely corresponds to the value of the color.  So to keep each unattached row a constant value, you will have to mix in the appropriate tint or shade of the compliment, not the pure color (in the yellow section for example you would probably use the second highest purple tint). 

A large part of the grade will come from issues of craftsmanship.  Be sure to keep it as neat and clean as possible.  Be sure to make the transitions from one box to the next as clean and sharp as possible.  Also, do NOT use white paint to cover up smears and errant marks on the remaining white areas of the panel.  Instead, wipe off the marks with an eraser or spirits soaked rag (or don’t make them in the first place).  Good luck.

For the beginning of class on Wednesday you are to have the six sections laid out with all twelve columns of ten boxes drawn in as shown on the first example sheet.  If you do not have this done or are in any way unprepared, the best you will be able to get in this assignment is a B.