Blog
3/27/2017 8:17:20 AM
I have a thing for white farmhouses. They are visual comfort food and nostalgic icons of Americana that I love to capture in paint.
Each one has a story to tell and hints of the lives that have shaped them. The story is told through their simple lines, the additions that sprout off of the main structure and any adornments added to pretty them up.
A freshly painted home is a bright spot on the landscape. Add laundry hanging in the sunlight to the house and you have a feeling that all is right with the world.
Age and neglect add history to the story line. Weathered paint and a slanting porch speak of struggle. Empty homes with broken windows stand as melancholy witnesses to lives come and gone.
I am not the only one who likes them. The white farmhouses I have painted sell quickly and get a lot of feedback when posted. Words like comfort, soothing, or serene are used to describe them. They seem to evoke longing for a past that defines our rural culture. They are not houses but characters in a story formed from wood and shaped by lives. As a painter I am happy to tell their tale.
3/20/2017 10:10:05 AM
Symbols play an important role in our lives.
When we see this we stop. 
When we see this we know the time.
Even the words you are reading are made up of symbols that our brain interprets as language. Without symbols it would be harder to get through our day. We rely on them for safety, promptness and expression of thought.
Symbols are helpful for everyday life but can interfere with an artist’s ability to truthfully represent the world around them. The reason we rely on symbolism is fear. If we are uncertain of how to paint something, symbols give us a means to create a recognizable image.
So an eye becomes:
A house becomes:
A tree becomes:
Artists can overcome reliance on symbolism by learning to describe shapes using comparative measuring. Comparative measuring is a method of flattening the 3-dimensional world onto the flat canvas by comparing points on an object that describe height to width and how they are connected. Remember the fun of doing dot to dot drawings as a child, where you would connect the numbers and an image would magically appear?
Comparative measuring is similar. You do not think about the "thing" you think about the shapes. Begin with the biggest shape possible find its height compared to its width. How do those points connect? Do they connect in a straight line, a curve, an angle? Once you have the largest shapes your find smaller shapes and how they fit in relation to what you have already marked. I think of this process as "reading" shapes.
Here the largest shapes of height and width have been marked. The other marks map the midpoint and turning of the head.
This drawing shows how the smaller shapes fit into the larger shapes and create a face without symbols.
Shapes are more interesting than symbols. My favorite part of drawing is the surprise shape that will perfectly describe something in context but is not recognizable on its own. In the first drawing below there is nothing to tell you what it is, in the second drawing the shape begins to look like an eye when it is surrounded by other shapes. In the painting you can see how the shapes of light that connect create the man’s portrait. Symbols take away the unique expression of the artist because they are easily recognizable and can be used in place of the factual shape.
Comparative measuring allows you to draw anything as long as you trust the process. Symbols are great for helping us show up on time and keeping us safe, but they are a hindrance to representing the world truthfully.
3/13/2017 7:37:24 AM
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield. $9.91 Amazon.com
I need to order the book, The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield, in bulk. It addresses in a poetic manner the universal problem of why artists procrastinate in what they love to do most, which is to create. Over the years I have had many heartfelt conversations with those who feel called to create but are unable to commit to the practice. The conversation usually ends with me handing them this book from my shelf.
The author is a writer but the struggle applies to all who work in creative fields. It is intended for those who seriously want to pursue their art where creativity is a calling, not an interest. The antagonist in Pressfield’s book is Resistance, with a capital R. Resistance is an entity that tries its best to undermine your passion and trick you into believing you are not worthy of your pursuit. Resistance says there are outside forces blocking you and the life that should be becomes the life that could have been. The antidote to resistance is to show up and put in the time and effort until the force of opposition is broken.
The end of the book has a very interesting chapter on inspiration. The theory is that inspiration is out there waiting to be found. Those who are determined and practiced in their art will be the conduit that gives life to the idea.
The War of Art is a short, 165 page book. Many of the pages are a single paragraph of insight that will fuel your desire to work. It is a book that I pick up and read when I need a shot of encouragement and a book to share with other artists who face this common struggle.
Here are some quotes from The War of Art:
“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.”
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
To order "The War of Art" click here
3/6/2017 7:31:38 AM
Last week I discussed how the influence of time affects how you work from photographs. This week we’ll look at other ways photos differ from life and how you can compensate for it. First let’s look at the limitations of a photograph.
Value clumping- Our eyes see a broader range of values than cameras. A camera clumps the middle tones into either light or dark. This is why, in a photograph, shadows will appear black and light areas look washed out. The middle tones, where the color resides, are usually lost.
An example of value clumping. The light side of my son's face is too light and the shadow side of his hair is too dark.
Edges- Our field of vision focuses on one object at a time and makes all other edges softer. A camera will tend to focus all edges the same. If we want depth and atmosphere in our paintings we must choose which edges will be hard and which will be soft.
Perspective- A camera will read the objects closest to the lens as larger than reality. This is true in real life as well but a camera will exaggerate the perspective creating a “fishbowl” effect.
The perspective in this photo is distorted giving my daughter a huge forehead and small chin.
Color- Color in photographs will differ from real life depending on a number of factors. Color in a photograph is affected by what type of camera you use, the lens, the monitor, the printer, the ink, the levels of ink, and the quality of paper. Each of these act as a filter and each filter steps you away from a true representation of color. If you try to match your colors to the photograph, you are copying a false representation of life.
Understand that I am not talking about professional photographers who know how to adjust settings and create beautiful images that are art in themselves. I am talking about photos that most people take, myself included, using a point and shoot technique.
How to Overcome these Problems
Work from life, work from life, work from life- It doesn’t matter if it is a still life, figurative or plein-air landscape - working from life will give you the knowledge of how the eye actually sees values, edges, perspective and color. Whenever you work from life you are building a bank of experiences to draw from. Visual memory is an important skill artists develop when they work from life and memory helps us translate a photograph into your own visual story.
Take your own photographs- Then you can photograph for different exposures and compositions. Do not use studio or other copyrighted photographs.
Learn to use photo editing programs- Adobe Photoshop and other editing programs allow you to make changes to your photographs so they are artist friendly. You can crop for different compositions. You can lighten shadows, darken highlights, adjust contrast, move objects and shift colors.
Approach your subject as if you were painting from life- Do value sketches and color studies to interpret the subject. Keep a sketch book on hand, and use it to take notes from life.
I did this watercolor in my sketchbook very quickly to record the color notes. The sky was so blue and I knew the camera would not do the colors justice.
Here is the photo I snapped right before I painted.
My 8x10 oil painting "Dolomite Morning" I hope to do a larger painting of this image in the future.
Hang your photos so that you can view them while you paint- I attach a horizontal strip of cardboard coming off the side of my easel, then tape the photos to it so I am viewing the painting and the photo at the same time. If you work from a monitor, make sure it is set so you can see your easel and the monitor without turning your head.
Photos are a great resource to work from as long as you understand their limitations. Working from life as often as possible will help you expand your ability to interpret photos into personal expression.
The photo reference and thumbnail sketches for "Turnaround"
I will be teaching a workshop Expressive Portraits from Photographs: all medium, April 28-30, Grosse Pointe Art Center, War Memorial. Grosse Pointe, Michigan. For more information click here
