Archive for April, 2011
Diane
On Saturday, I leave Paradise for climes further north. I’ll have lunch with sis and family and stay the night with bro and wife before I head for Durham, NC, arriving there Monday afternoon sometime.
In Durham, I have a plein air painter friend, Diane, whom I’ve known for a few years now. We were both students of Cassandra James, Austin, TX, painter, and teacher at Ringling School of Art and Design and the summer camps where Diane and I met. At this point Cassandra is ill and no longer teaches, but we still visit with her – Diane more often than I.
It will be good to see my friend again. She wants to show me her area and I am eager to see it as I am not acquainted with that area. Then it will be really nice to be back in Maryland for the summer.
Drawing Ellipses
One shape that appears often to the oil painter of still lifes is the ellipse. Anytime a bowl, cup, bottle or anything cylindrical, spherical or half spherical is involved, an ellipse is to be painted.
The following rules apply only to vertical cylinders. First, establish your eye level. The ellipse nearest our eye level is the flattest, or the most closed. The further the ellipse is from eye level, the more open or round it is. If your eye is nearest the opening of a bottle, the ellipse describing that opening is very flat and the ellipse describing the bottom of the bottle is the most open. The openness of other ellipses, such as a salt shaker on its side, depends on the angle from which they are viewed.
Drawing a good ellipse takes practice. An ellipse is absolutely symmetrical and the ends are never pointed. You could place the ellipse within a rectangle, keeping in mind that an ellipse is always divisible into four equal quadrants. However, drawing a good ellipse comes only with a lot of practice.
Drawing Through
Being able to draw well is an essential tool not only for the oil painter, but for artists of all genres. If the parts of our paintings are not in proportion, the painting does not look believable.
One of the best ways to create a convincing three-dimensional figure is by using a method called “drawing through” in which you act as though the object is transparent. You draw not only what is seen, but also what is unseen. In this way you capture the underlying structure and achieve a sense of volume and depth in space.
In drawing a silo, you would draw not only the top ellipse, but also lightly sketch the center and bottom ones as well. If you were drawing a barn, you would imagine it as a cube or box and lightly draw through all 6 sides. It is a simple way to prevent a flattened silo or a lopsided barn.
The Law of Opposites
Color theory for oil painters is a very complex subject, but one of the most important parts of it is the law of opposites that relates to color temperature. On a sunny day, objects in the sun are a warm color, and the shadows are cool. On a cloudy day, objects are cool and the shadows are warm.
This is easier to say than to master because the local color of objects is involved. So although grass in sunlight and grass in shadow are both green, one is a warm green and the other a cool green. Bill Parks, a noted teacher, once said, “As long as you have the temperature right, you can get away with almost anything.” However, it may take a few years to really understand how right he was.
Wolf Kahn
Recently I came upon a photo of an oil painting by Wolf Kahn. He paints landscapes in bright colors, which really inspire me. In this painting, his tree trunks are blue and purple – something I hadn’t thought about for a while.
I decided to try to create a painting much like his. Of course, his is much larger and more beautiful than mine, but doing this was good practice and a way to stretch my imagination and thinking as I continue to try to create colorful landscape paintings. At left is my version of his painting. Now, don’t you think that is beautiful?