Category: Artist’s Banter

Posts here are categorized as using any medium. This is where the artists discuss random elements of art in a playful and friendly exchange.
  • Watercolor Earth Pigments

    Qor watercolors by Golden Artist. Create an earth pigment palette using Qor watercolors and the color chart I made years ago with Golden Artist Heavy Body Acrylics. This would consist of Yellow Titanate, Venetian Red, Chromium Oxide Green, Titanium White and Paynes Gray.

  • Try the Pounce Bag

    Try the pounce bag again. Use the same image on newsprint as before. Pounce onto D’ Arches oil paper.

  • Color Thoughts

    I saw the sky this morning before sunrise, but still illuminated by the sunrise to come. The colors were various shades of Paynes Grey. I will mix it using Ivory Black and Winsor Blue or I could simply use Paynes Grey. Distill the silhouette of the distant hills into rectangles that present various shades of Paynes Grey against the slightly redder blue of the higher keyed sky. Make sure to place a subtle dirty mauve band above and about the rectangles that represents the horizon.

  • Work on Oil Primed White Surface

    Work on a oil primed white surface. Start portrait or figure painting with Raw Umber and a wipeout technique. Once complete with underpainting, then move into the background with the muck jar. Next, work all your learned techniques to bring your portrait/figurative to life. Try earnestly to incorporate transitional colors as you progress from highlight to shadow. Finally, enhance the background with the “dirty” colors to abstract that background toward the conclusion.

  • Don’t Be Disappointed in Yourself

    Don’t be disappointed in yourself. It tightens you up and does not allow the freedom to flow creatively.

  • The Future are Oils

    The future are oils. I see the versatility. I see the size of a stable canvas grow. I see the color dynamics. I see that the French easel is fully autonomous studio in a convenient wooden box. Work more frequently and with more direction.

  • Plein Aire Painting

    Reminiscent of Christian Arnould, who uses a photo reference of an outdoor scene. I would use my Kodak camera and photo holder to paint from reference on oil paper in the same manner.

    He really is playing off the pliability and the forgiveness of oil paint. Granted, Christian is a master of color and stroke. These two talents command the outcome. Christian is allowed grace and forgiveness on the piece, because he knows his limits and his strengths, but most of all Christian knows his medium and the tools that dictate each outcome throughout the painting process.

    I need to work in the same manner. My thought is to work on the D’Arches Huile oil paper. Begin by toning with Winsor & Newton Griffin Alkyd Cadmium Red Light Hue. Then work in earnest with my standard set of colors in Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil.

    Materials are Helix Ultra-Lite Core Plain Edge Board with Huile paper attached, solidly secured onto my French easel. Tone the paper, then start right away painting direct with no preliminary drawing to assist.

    Try using more medium in my paints. Do not fear this addition. The Groves Copal Varnish mixed 50/50 with turpentine. Work all along the painting as if you’d paint a watercolor. Have at hand at all times the John Fabian Carlson’s sky color traditions. Use this at all times.

    Christian uses a very thin black under drawing placed very rapidly … Most likely either Ivory Black or a mixture of Alizarin and Hookers Green. Either way… Thinned down with turps.

    The more I work from photos in the studio, the more my selection of photos or photo reference will improve, along with my method of painting or approach.

    I need to squint more to perceive the subtle different tonal range across the work I’m producing.

    Christian Arnould is a genius, because of the accumulated work he has amassed over the course of a lifetime. He has proven without a shadow of a doubt his significance in the art world. He is a titan and an icon.

    Check Christian Arnould out on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/christian_arnould/

  • Plein Aire Painting

    When summer comes go outside and plein aire paint. Bring your normal painting supplies. Treat a panel with Winsor and Newton oil painting primer. Begin the piece with a charcoal drawing for compositional choices, scale and proportions only. Fix with spray shellac, then begin in earnest to do a plein aire piece.

  • Ideas on Plein Aire Oil Painting

    There are multiple ways to start. Photos from my Kodak Mini Shot 3 as source material. Start either on a stretched canvas, canvas panel or D’Arches oil painting paper. Draw using charcoal the image presented. Do this either direct from nature or from a photo source. Paint starting by blocking in the large shapes. Be connected to the composition. Use your color ideas. Remember to work the figure in from Robert Beverly Hale’s great book, “Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters”. Remember to clearly define color composition on the figure… Sharply in focus. All background will be out of focus and representational with geometrical shapes presenting items found in nature.

    In addition, use the flexible ruler to create my horizon line. Bend a nice shape and use Fibonacci caliper to locate the golden rule horizon. Connect the dots where they land with an interesting “twist”.

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