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Painting Part V: homing in on details
Sep. 8th, 2011 10:33 pm8/19 Well, T. loved the painting--in fact, he said he was blown away and would be willing to put it on Kickstarter as it is. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering how much he liked the rough pencil sketches. He asked if I could finish it by 8/24, and I said that should be doable.
It was a big relief to know that I can make the picture work, and also to have an end point for it. Then I can do other, simpler pieces for the project.
Taking the evening off from painting, I found an amazing digital artist on deviantart, rhads. He has some of the most jaw-droppingly luminous art and vivacious color I’ve ever seen. This image mesmerizes me...
The Wind by ~rhads on deviantART
This guy knows how to paint clouds. I’m starting to grasp what I’ve been doing wrong... Dark seams between the cloud masses make sense; dark edges at the opening don’t. I'm still not sure what color should be between the yellow and grey layers... the shadows on warm-light clouds are usually mauve/ rose, but I'm nervous about introducing a new color at this point!
8/20 I showed the painting to some co-workers/ fellow artists, who were impressed. I expected some cloud critique, but one said, “Maybe you’re just thinking about it too hard.” Doubtless.
Their reactions bolstered my confidence. Yet as soon as I resumed painting, it all looked like an unfinished mess again. Hilarious.
I worked more on the yellow figure, defining the fabric folds...
then added more shadow to match the direction of the light:
I needed a reference to figure out the exact shape of the figures' shadows. That led me to staging this bizarre diorama with items on hand...
...then playing with the light angle till I got what I needed. I worked on the cast shadows and the snow around the body with phthalo blue.
I put a little more yellow and orange and brownish-white on the yellow clouds. It’s frustrating that I can’t fuzz the yellow cloud edges over the blue sky, because that creates unwanted green!
Throughout this project, I've had a huge problem with my cats and their residual hair. I live with 7 cats, some number of which are always in my vicinity, and their shed hair is everywhere, on every surface, on every paintbrush, no matter what I do. This may sound like a trivial problem, but it really isn't. Cat hairs readily stick in acrylic paint and continue to be very visible; more paint doesn't cover them. Once dried, they can only be removed by scraping or sanding. It is vexatious.
Likewise vexatious are the cats themselves, who are used to strutting around my computer desk and sitting on my lap whenever they damn well please. This doesn't work when I'm hunched over the slanted artdesk (encroaching the lap space!) and trying to forbid them from tromping through my paint. Shutting the door is not an option: they're loud, they're persistent, and they outnumber me! I keep struggling with them being insistently affectionate. There I am unable to paint while a cat dithers on my lap, my palette drying as I wait for them to settle, and clouds of hair settle over the painting ... I had to buy them off by creating auxiliary catbeds in the office, and one still managed to jump onto my palette at one point (though miraculously did not track paint anywhere).
8/21 At this point I felt very satisfied with the whole right side of the image: the figures, the hills, the trail, the planet. But the clouds still looked so flat and unconvincing by comparison, it was driving me crazy (even if no one else was bothered by it). They lacked conviction. Why couldn't I have gone to a school where they taught us something about actual rendering, as opposed to that postmodernist paradigm deconstruction crap?
I detailed the mountains with phthalo/titanium white mixtures, bringing out snow highlights and deepest shadows:
...Then more phthalo glazes to unify the effect and keep it all in shadow.
Of all my attempts at painting mountains, that just might be the best! The irony is that the earlier, simpler stage may have been more effective as background; this may be a little too much detail, calling attention to itself...too bad, I like it and I ain't painting it out.
As I had admitted upfront to T., the spaceship was the one part of this project I felt uncertain about. I am decent at depicting people and animals and natural settings, because that's what interests me and I spend a lot of time looking at them analytically. I can depict architecture if I have to, but it's not my fave (too much line-ruling). I am lousy at depicting cars, guns, planes, robots, and other machinery because they don't interest me. I have absolutely no ideas or opinions about what a spaceship should look like... so I'd just have to fake it, saved by the fact that this ship is in the distance and you don't see the whole thing.
The pic above shows my first pass at the ship, in a mix of phthalo, white, a tidge of yellow, and a tidge of alizarin. Once I looked at the painting from a few feet back, I could see that I needed to simplify the shape and make the damage more obvious: a bigger bite out of the outline.
To make the ship stand out more from the blues of the snow and mountains, I added a tiny bit of green to my mixture, the only green in the painting. I made the whole thing lighter than it might realistically be within the mountain shadow, in order to read well at this small scale. I detailed the lake ice/ water.
Next: finalize the planet details. In proper foreshortening, the rings should flare much wider at the bend, and be really skinny in back. I started that, but after this long session of painting, my hand wasn’t steady enough to do the fine ring lines...especially since I discovered that the rings are bent over the planet! I'd have to fix it on a fresh day. Using a protractor as a template, I firmed up the planet edge by outlining in phthalo with a tiny round brush, then feathering the blue out with a filbert brush so it wouldn't leave a distinct paint line. Then I corrected the planet edge with white, to provide a good base for the yellow corrections.
Having lost my ability to paint steady lines, I knew it was time to stop. But I'm close. All that remains is final details on the red man, finishing the ring and planet edge, and whatever I’m going to do to the &^%$# clouds. Fiddly little adjustments... I’m at the point where I hate every line of it and I want it to be done. I have to remind myself that most people will not be looking at it from 4 inches away.
Altogether, I had spent about 24 hours on this so far. It’s amazing how draining the work is! I think it’s the sustained concentration and decision making, creating something out of nothing. The constant uncertainty: is this stroke going to work? This one? Did I just cover over the best part? When sewing a garment, there may be parts you haven’t figured out, but you know it will probably involve consistent elements like a shoulder seam, a sleeve seam, hems; a fundamental structure that is somewhat predictable... with painting, it's all a mystery, from scratch, every time.
It was a big relief to know that I can make the picture work, and also to have an end point for it. Then I can do other, simpler pieces for the project.
Taking the evening off from painting, I found an amazing digital artist on deviantart, rhads. He has some of the most jaw-droppingly luminous art and vivacious color I’ve ever seen. This image mesmerizes me...
The Wind by ~rhads on deviantART
This guy knows how to paint clouds. I’m starting to grasp what I’ve been doing wrong... Dark seams between the cloud masses make sense; dark edges at the opening don’t. I'm still not sure what color should be between the yellow and grey layers... the shadows on warm-light clouds are usually mauve/ rose, but I'm nervous about introducing a new color at this point!
8/20 I showed the painting to some co-workers/ fellow artists, who were impressed. I expected some cloud critique, but one said, “Maybe you’re just thinking about it too hard.” Doubtless.
Their reactions bolstered my confidence. Yet as soon as I resumed painting, it all looked like an unfinished mess again. Hilarious.
I worked more on the yellow figure, defining the fabric folds...
then added more shadow to match the direction of the light:
I needed a reference to figure out the exact shape of the figures' shadows. That led me to staging this bizarre diorama with items on hand...
...then playing with the light angle till I got what I needed. I worked on the cast shadows and the snow around the body with phthalo blue.
I put a little more yellow and orange and brownish-white on the yellow clouds. It’s frustrating that I can’t fuzz the yellow cloud edges over the blue sky, because that creates unwanted green!
Throughout this project, I've had a huge problem with my cats and their residual hair. I live with 7 cats, some number of which are always in my vicinity, and their shed hair is everywhere, on every surface, on every paintbrush, no matter what I do. This may sound like a trivial problem, but it really isn't. Cat hairs readily stick in acrylic paint and continue to be very visible; more paint doesn't cover them. Once dried, they can only be removed by scraping or sanding. It is vexatious.
Likewise vexatious are the cats themselves, who are used to strutting around my computer desk and sitting on my lap whenever they damn well please. This doesn't work when I'm hunched over the slanted artdesk (encroaching the lap space!) and trying to forbid them from tromping through my paint. Shutting the door is not an option: they're loud, they're persistent, and they outnumber me! I keep struggling with them being insistently affectionate. There I am unable to paint while a cat dithers on my lap, my palette drying as I wait for them to settle, and clouds of hair settle over the painting ... I had to buy them off by creating auxiliary catbeds in the office, and one still managed to jump onto my palette at one point (though miraculously did not track paint anywhere).
8/21 At this point I felt very satisfied with the whole right side of the image: the figures, the hills, the trail, the planet. But the clouds still looked so flat and unconvincing by comparison, it was driving me crazy (even if no one else was bothered by it). They lacked conviction. Why couldn't I have gone to a school where they taught us something about actual rendering, as opposed to that postmodernist paradigm deconstruction crap?
I detailed the mountains with phthalo/titanium white mixtures, bringing out snow highlights and deepest shadows:
...Then more phthalo glazes to unify the effect and keep it all in shadow.
Of all my attempts at painting mountains, that just might be the best! The irony is that the earlier, simpler stage may have been more effective as background; this may be a little too much detail, calling attention to itself...too bad, I like it and I ain't painting it out.
As I had admitted upfront to T., the spaceship was the one part of this project I felt uncertain about. I am decent at depicting people and animals and natural settings, because that's what interests me and I spend a lot of time looking at them analytically. I can depict architecture if I have to, but it's not my fave (too much line-ruling). I am lousy at depicting cars, guns, planes, robots, and other machinery because they don't interest me. I have absolutely no ideas or opinions about what a spaceship should look like... so I'd just have to fake it, saved by the fact that this ship is in the distance and you don't see the whole thing.
The pic above shows my first pass at the ship, in a mix of phthalo, white, a tidge of yellow, and a tidge of alizarin. Once I looked at the painting from a few feet back, I could see that I needed to simplify the shape and make the damage more obvious: a bigger bite out of the outline.
To make the ship stand out more from the blues of the snow and mountains, I added a tiny bit of green to my mixture, the only green in the painting. I made the whole thing lighter than it might realistically be within the mountain shadow, in order to read well at this small scale. I detailed the lake ice/ water.
Next: finalize the planet details. In proper foreshortening, the rings should flare much wider at the bend, and be really skinny in back. I started that, but after this long session of painting, my hand wasn’t steady enough to do the fine ring lines...especially since I discovered that the rings are bent over the planet! I'd have to fix it on a fresh day. Using a protractor as a template, I firmed up the planet edge by outlining in phthalo with a tiny round brush, then feathering the blue out with a filbert brush so it wouldn't leave a distinct paint line. Then I corrected the planet edge with white, to provide a good base for the yellow corrections.
Having lost my ability to paint steady lines, I knew it was time to stop. But I'm close. All that remains is final details on the red man, finishing the ring and planet edge, and whatever I’m going to do to the &^%$# clouds. Fiddly little adjustments... I’m at the point where I hate every line of it and I want it to be done. I have to remind myself that most people will not be looking at it from 4 inches away.
Altogether, I had spent about 24 hours on this so far. It’s amazing how draining the work is! I think it’s the sustained concentration and decision making, creating something out of nothing. The constant uncertainty: is this stroke going to work? This one? Did I just cover over the best part? When sewing a garment, there may be parts you haven’t figured out, but you know it will probably involve consistent elements like a shoulder seam, a sleeve seam, hems; a fundamental structure that is somewhat predictable... with painting, it's all a mystery, from scratch, every time.
