Cultural Days

Richmond Artists Guild planned our usual contribution to Cultural Days - which was September 30th-by having a model and the public could either watch or join in. We decided to have a bit of a twist by having our model pose on her motorcycle. One good thing was, when the model took a break to stretch and walk around, the motorcycle stayed put so some more work could still be done.Some were painting on canvases but I decided to work on pastels and I chose a neutral grey pastel paper. Pastel paper is two-sided. One side is smoother and the other side has more of a grid surface to hold the pastel pigment. Good quality pastels have more pigment than cheaper ones. Pastels come in soft, hard or even pencil forms. There are also very soft powdery ones that come in little cases much like the compacts girls used to carry to powder their noses. In fact, this form of pastel is applied with a sponge - and make-up sponges are cheaper than the ones sold for the same purpose in art stores. Pastels have to be kept sorted to like colours so that they don't rub off against each other and become grubby. One of the joys of using pastels is that the colours have a lush richness to them that can be a delight to apply. Well- it rained on our Cultural Day, but we were under a canopy and managed to finish- but I bet our model would have been happier indoors with a heater.

Sunflowers and yellow paint

Here is the 2017 sunflower painting. I can certainly understand Van Gogh's fascination with sunflowers- somehow they are always a bit different and always interesting. Plus there is the challenge with working with yellow. Yellow pigment tends to be on the weak side - no mater what the medium it is in. I often under-paint with white so the yellow can then show to its best advantage. Today's paints are permanent but Van Gogh had trouble with his yellows because they changed with time and became more green- thus making a challenge for restorers. The question being - not only what to use - but what shade was he actually aiming at?  It is also a challenge to work shadows with yellows and not have them turn muddy, I like acrylics as the shadows can be done with glazes and it keeps the colours fresher. No vase in this one but there is in my sunflower painting in Mila's online gallery at www.va-fair.com  Van Gogh signed his name on the vase- so, as a tribute to him, I signed my  name on the vase too.  There are actually several different yellow paints in this painting- not only Cadmium Yellow Light, Medium and Dark, but also some Azo Yellow and a few more! Tjen there is Naples Yellow in with some blues and Sap Green to make the greens. Colour is fun!

More plein air

This was a different subject from a day out at Iva's garden. Dave and Iva have a collection of statues and gargoyles that inhabit their garden. I thought this little fellow might be fun to paint because he has a mischievous expression...then it was too light behind him (in reality) so I had to darken down the trees to make the painting work. . He does look like a statue here however and I wonder if he should be "revisited" as a "live" imp? At the moment, he will be left as is- a painting that records a nice day out with friends.
     My paintings that Mila has - all large paintings, not like this little 10 x 8- are now on her online gallery - www.va-fair.com - so take a look

Plein air summer

While not a great summer because of forest fires, this summer has been great for  good-weather Tuesdays and Men in Hats have been busy painting in various locations around the Lower Mainland. A couple of weeks ago, we went to the north end of Trout Lake - aka John Hendry Park. I found a good spot under the shade of a big tree and elected to paint this scene. The strips of light and dark appealed to me - as did the green canopy. It is a small canvas -just 8 x 10- So I mostly finished it on the spot. Hopefully, it captures the mood and the freshness of the day. It is always a pleasure to be out with a bunch of other artists. We are also fortunate to have a great selection of places to paint. We will be painting through to mid-October and post the locations on the Men in Hats website so that other artists are welcome to join us. No instruction - just bring paints and a lunch.

Fun from the Fifties

Men in Hats had a fun day last Tuesday when we went to my trainer's house. He has a great "fifties" collection . The '56 Bel Air Chev, a '56 Ford truck and an old motor cycle were all set up for us ---even  with a couple of mannequins.  (Great models- they never moved!)  The car hop was on roller skates and had a tray with some delicious looking milkshakes - too bad they were wax!  This is an acrylic on canvas painting. It was a challenge getting the chrome shiny enough. Also, I wanted to indicate the Chevrolet "V" and the chrome name on the side - without painting it so exactly that it looked like an advertisement for a magazine, rather than a painting. The "Drive-In", of course, is invented. I've never really done a car "portrait" before- but it turned out to be fun as well as a challenge. The tail fin of this car is going into another painting - but more of that later.

Life drawing- did it make a difference?

Did it make a difference? I don't see any *huge*difference after reading the perspective book.  However, I was perhaps more aware of the foreshortening challenges. These were all done with a brush-pen and then coloured pencil was added - only without the "pencil" part. These were Prismacolor wooden-less blocks - looking just like hard pastels in shape  but being made solely of the core material of a pencil crayon. I was trying deliberately to think of connecting curvilinear lines -without marking them on the page- and drawing quickly with the brush-pen. The top two figures were 1 minute each. The bottom drawing was a 20-minute pose and I did add some colour while the model was posing and then added more later, especially in the background. so far, I have left the sticks in their square shape , but I'm toying around with the idea of hand-sharpening- probably with a knife- one end. The shape does allow a quicker approach to noting light and shade areas. Working with Graphitint pencils resulted in more delicate drawings - as seen in a recent post- but I am currently enjoying the stronger contrast with the brush-pen as well as colour again. The human body is always a challenge to draw since  mistakes are so easily seen. Yet, there is something personal about each artist's approach. I think there is more feeling that a photo would show.

Another look at Perspective

Drawing in Real Perspective by Xavier Bolot.        Perspective is often a challenge for an artist so I approached this book with a great deal of interest. However, I found the book rather over-whelming as it is a very verbal explanation for solving a visual problem. I haven't thought about trigonometry since high-school so I found wading through pages of mathematical explanations a bit heavy going. Ultimately, the explanations make sense and the figure drawings offer worthwhile guidance.
     The Greeks used curvilinear perspective. A temple viewed from a distance is seen as straight, friezes on a column appear to be the same height when seen from the ground because curves characteristic of our natural vision perception have been utilized.
      Linear perspective was developed in the Renaissance but it doesn't work for very wide landscapes or for close-ups with models. One section shows some errors of the "old masters". Mantegna's "Dead Christ" looks strange because the foreshortened proportions are all false. Caravaggio's painting of a man with outstretched arms in "Pilgrims of Emmaus" has the hands all wrong. The left hand is closer to the viewer and is acceptable as is - but the right hand- extended away- has been painted the same size and so looks enormous. Curving guidelines are very much needed to check on model proportions. I found this section the most interesting and worthwhile.
     I found this book thought-provoking about perspective but I also concluded that drawing what you actually see, applying the principles intuitively, while being aware of common errors is the most helpful advice. I can see myself looking carefully at angles and proportions but not getting too mathematical about it. This was worthwhile reading.