procedures

The process for beginning a painting is one of tradition for some painters, or habit, some painters have to clean their studios before starting, find the right music, or wait ‘til the mood or inspiration strikes. Some painters just start while, some only work when they have a show coming up or they have a commission.

*We will begin by completing a simple still Life of basic geometric shapes.

1) We draw still life thumbnails, we are actually composing the still life, we do this by finding a interesting position to work from (POV) . This position will be resumed at each session until the painting is complete. What to look for, *light, *shadow, *Shape, *color *composition, contrast, focal point, the ability to challenge your self.  Nutshell - Do thumbnails in black and white and color. Understand that you are doing nothing new, but it is new for you so find an interesting POV and go to town.

2) Putting it on canvas, are you ready? During the drawing process you may have done some quick studies in paint. Kind of like a gesture drawing with value in paint. If not stop and do some. I recommend doing them monochromatic. Then maybe decide on a color scheme. Do the same gesture type painting. This would be working quickly, fast, not worrying about getting the details correct if doing them at all. These studies are really about shape and color.  Work smallish 8x8 12x12, something like that. Use a complementary scheme. Anything tried now will help during the painting process.

3) So now, putting it on canvas. Are you ready? Yes you are. You are where you need to be. Looking at your masterpiece to come, envisioning it on the canvas.  So we can draw the image in light, LIGHT pencil, we can use charcoal, which comes with its pros and cons. Making the paint dirty smudging but also using the smudges as shadow and basically laying out the whole painting. WHY, you can even use water or medium at this point. Last, you can do a wash in paint. This is a thin, watercolor like painting compete with shading etc. we are using paint, one color and water. I use as few lines as possible and try to concentrate on forms rather than shapes.

4) Are we ready to begin YET? Yes. Rule of thumb, background first.

5) Next, foreground

6) Next objects or focal point. These are washes, thin layers of paint that can be changed as needed.

7) Once this is accomplished, start painting and again, background, foreground and focal point. This is a rule of thumb and may not apply, but what you do not want to happen is to find yourself painting the background around your focal point. Details are last and before you start you should know what the details are. The foreground is always being touched up after the focal point is finished. So, you have to be careful here adding your shadows or just fussing with the weight of the focal point.