Color Blocks

My art teacher was a student of Henry Hensche. It was his teaching method to have students paint colored blocks in different light as a way to study color. So our assignment is to collect and paint wooden blocks to represent the different color attributes: value, intensity and hue. Then we paint them over and over in different lights. I can see that this will really help me to SEE the colors and the light more accurately. It will also give me the practice and discipline to mix paint efficiently and effectively. It's like playing scales on the piano. Sigh.

I finally found a way to get a little bit more excited about this. I did the study, using cool colors on a cool cloudy morning. There really were no shadows at all. Bowing to the importance of simultaneous contrast (please be impressed), I carefully found the color of the cool, dull cloth underneath the blocks. But what about the rest of the background? It defines the color, too.

And so, kind viewer, can you guess what is at the top of my composition? It is the lovely camelia branches hanging down over the dewy wet garden bed. The color of the soil is accurate, and the three blocks of color for the leaves are very close. I'll see how my teacher reacts to this before I dare to paint in the hummingbird.

Hollyhocks

I am supposed to be painting blocks of color using a palette knife. I find it so boring and uninspiring!
Sooo, I went outside and painted our hollyhocks instead, using my brushes on a canvas board instead of the gessoed masonite we use in class.

My family and I have been watching these flowers slowly grow from a a mass of huge undefined leaves. We joked about the Little House of Horrors flower while we waited to see what these flowers would finally look like. They finally began to open and now are in full bloom.

The challenge in painting them was first, to simplify the composition enough to make the flowers stand out. They are against our fence with the oaks and sycamore behind them. The second thing was to somehow make all that green on green look both different and interesting. I am happy with the way they came out.

It was especially fun just to do what I wanted and be free of the requirements of my art class.

Dan McCaw Workshop

 Dan McCaw put on a painting workshop and demonstration this past weekend. He has a fabulous career as an artist, teacher,  and author. He spent most of the morning with a slide show and powerpoint presenting and commenting on his many years of work. It was really interesting.

He works closely with his two sons, who are also becoming successful artists. The interplay of ideas, and the physical support of having others to help build and transport the works, has clearly brought Dan a great deal of pride and joy.

 For his demo in the afternoon, he did this "head" as he simply calls this new phase he is in. He has done a large number of them, working from his imagination. He emphasized that he is exploring his own choices in art now. He feels freed from the demands of gallery success and popularity. He is aware that these heads are not "light and pretty" like the lovely beach scenes he has done, that they are not to everyone's taste. He has finally given himself permission to not try to please everyone!

 I love the pictures he has done of cafe scenes, with the lovely indoor light dramatizing a character or group of people in a seemingly leisure moment. His dark, brooding heads are not my preference. But despite that, I applaud Dan for finally following his own vision and imagination. It takes courage!

A tribute to Betty Edwards

In 1995 I was lucky enough to take Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain at UC Long Beach from Betty Edwards herself. I had already taken this drawing class from John trees at Pasadena City College and had pretty good drawing skills. Betty's class was actually designed for people who wanted to learn to teach drawing. And I learned to draw so much better!

This chair was a class lesson on negative space. It is a cornerstone of her program, so as a class, we gave Betty a small model chair.

The truly amazing thing about Betty's class was her ability to teach each and every one of us to draw confidently with accuracy. I never did become a "Drawing on the Right Side..." instructor, but I did use a lot of what I learned in my classroom.

Betty was the first to say, drawing is not art. And I loved her comment "The best reason for bad art is: that is the way it looks". I thought of that specifically when I listened to Michael Obermeyer talking about moving objects around in his composition if, in life,  they weren't laid out the way he wanted them. He would move trees in or out of his picture, stretch them to fill space or shrink them out of the way. He would literally move mountains.

Once I learned to draw I really should have kept at it. Looking at my self-portrait now, I see several errors based on what I have learned from Anne Satzyk. Onward.

Three Pears

Back to basics! The weather has continued to be cloudy and gray, even when the rain stops. So I stayed inside and went back to fruit. I need to learn to be more objective about my work. When I finished these, I was pretty unimpressed. I felt like I was going backwards. Now that I look at them again, and compare to the work I have done before, I can see some progress. I definitely remembered to keep asking the questions our teacher taught us - darkest darks, relative values, warm/cool - so that I could make the decisions necessary to keep moving forward.

Painting fruit makes me remember my commitment to complete my first two hundred paintings!! I think I have about 160 to go!! I hope persistence is more valuable than innate talent.

Verdugo Adobe

My next adventure was to the Verdugo Adobe. We had several fun field trips here, walking from school and spending time at Verdugo Park on the way. My memory was of a peaceful, wooded park. That is true, but it was really challenging to find a decent view of the Adobe. The trees are in the way from all sides, and there is a strange block wall, built in recent times, that blocks what view there may have been.

I decided to try to capture the comfort of the shady porch, with the bright sunshine showing through at the end. Again, the lighting was very tricky. I saw a plein air picture online of a scene of the bight sunny ocean, looking out from inside a dark cave. That was the feeling I had here. Looking into the light from inside a cave! I'm not sure why I couldn't make the floor flat. The whole building is at odd angles, sagging and warping. The floor was worn and wobbly, but not as much as it seems in my painting!

Hahamonga Park on a Cloudy Day

I haven't posted for awhile but I have been working and moving forward with my art. I spent some time scouting out good places to paint outdoors. This is a spot at Hahamonga Park. It was cloudy, but I was determined to try to paint something anyways. Luckily the sun came out for a moment and I was able to understand the light a little better. What a difference it made!