Book Review: The Painterly Approach: An Artist's Guide to Seeing, Painting and Expressing

I'm not sure who recommended that I buy the book entitled "The Painterly Approach: An Artist's Guide to Seeing, Painting and Expressing" by Bob Rohm, but whoever it was knew what I enjoyed. 

Rohm describes "painterly" as how one uses line, edges and masses to suggest and express oneself as an artist. "The painterly approach suggests form, detail and mood from start as each part relates to the poetry of the whole"

Throughout the book, he uses beautiful illustrative examples of his landscapes.

Many art books cover similar topics such as color, value, composition, texture, but Rohm has a poetic way of communicating and illustrating his messages.  I particularly like his explanations of how values and edges work together describe form. 

Although he is an oil and pastel painter there is much information that can be applied to watercolours. I have no hesitation in recommending this inspiring book to other visual artists. This is likely a book that I will reference on a regular basis.

Here are some of his paintings:

Have a great week
Danielle

Breaking the rules

We spend a lot of time (at least I do) increasing our understanding and application of the rules of art. There are rules for values, colours, compositions, etc. We try to apply these rules to create "better" art or art the will be more pleasing.

Having said that, how many times have you looked at a painting and thought how wonderful it was but yet, it didn't respect conventional rules.

To successfully break the rules, it's important that you first know the rules. You need to know exactly what you’re doing. Millions of people break the rules of art every day but just don’t know it.

A good number of them do it and have very successful art careers. Adisorn Pornsirikarn is certainly one artist that doesn't follow traditional composition rules. One evening at an art association event, someone showed one his paintings on the cover of a French Watercolour magazine. I was shocked to hear people seriously criticize it. They had numerous reason, such as he doesn't have a centre of focus. What do you think of this painting? Personally, I'm a fan of his work and look forward to his new paintings that he shares on Facebook on a regular basis.

Of this painting, some might say the light spot at the top left draws the eyes out of the painting. Where's the centre of focus? The bottom left flower should face to the inside of the painting, etc. When I look at this, all I see is an amazing talent and an amazing ability to do some negative painting. I would be pleased if I could paint half as well as he does.

Breaking traditional rules have created some breakthrough works of art and opened new possibilities. Think of the Impressionists, Picasso - they certainly broke the art rules of their times. Initially, their art was not well received by the public who wasn’t yet used to such different ways, but eventually the public taste got accustomed to new ideas. What seemed chocking 150 years ago is consider as classic nowadays.

There’s no rule that can’t be broken, so long as it’s broken with purpose. Rules exist to guide us — a reasonable default when we don’t have a better idea — but they should not stop us from experimenting. In fact, the truly innovative, inspired ideas are frequently the result of breaking a rule that others many not dare to break or are too focused on trying to adopt.

Have a great week
Danielle

When is mud .. mud?

Recently on AT discussion group one member asked "When is mud .. mud?"

Making ‘mud’ is often one of the first problems that beginners mention especially when mixing browns, greys and greens.

 

I particularly thought NSerie's response to this posting was interesting. Here is an extract from his response. Following this, I'll provide some tips to avoid making mud.

 

What is "mud" - dead, lifeless sullied color.

 

How is it made? - in the palette or overworking on the paper. The formula is simply a combination of the three primaries. Mud is, get this, a neutralization of color temperature. How do we remedy? Re-establish a color temperature dominance, either cool or warm.

 

Sounds complicated? Sorta.

 

Bored? Try this - Get a scrap piece of paper. Draw a 2" x 3" rectangle on it. Paint a blue of your choice in it. Now while still wet with your scrap at an angle, drop in another blue of your choice into the top of the rectangle and watch the two blues blend (granulation) as the new blue drips slowly into the old blue. No problems. Cool color dominance! You can do this all day long with 100's of blues - no mud.

 

Now with the paper still at an angle AND STILL wet, mix up a nice juicy warm red in your palette and now drop that into the rectangle. Uh-oh - mud! The color dominance has gone from cool to NEUTRAL as now we have red yellow and blue now mixed!

 

How to fix? Well keeping that rectangle wet drop more warn red or another red into the rectangle. Slowly you are re-establishing a new color dominance of warm! Blue will "disappear" so to speak. Color dominance has now been re-established.

 

More mud wanted? Well now in your STILL WET (THE RECTANGLE STAYS WET THE ENTIRE TIME) rectangle, drop in some blue and watch it drip into the red an become mud. You get the idea.

 

And if its something you desire - its easy to make! Have fun!

 

Thanks NSerie for allowing me to use the above. He credits Don Andrews for the principles stated above.

 

Here a few guidelines for avoiding mud.

• apply thin layers of glazing on bone dry paper
• use transparent colours for your mixes
• limit use of opaque colours when mixing
• try to avoid mixing two warm. Rarely will you create mud with two cool colours or one warm and one cool
• limit number of colours in your mix
• when mixing 3 primary colors do not use similar quantities
• avoid mixing secondary color with its complementary primary in similar proportions

If you have created mud and decide to lift it” the Mud off, I suggest using a big wide brush to put clean water over the area. Do not stir the mud up with heavy handed strokes.

This week's artist find is Judith Haynes Levins. There is certainly no mud in this painting. I love the fact that she only used a few blues (UMB and Indigo)

Have a great week

Danielle

 



Cleaning brushes and keeping the point

So how do you maintain your kolinsky or other natural fibre watercolour brushes?
 
Due to the price of these brushes, we often treat them as our "most prized possession". I don't recall getting any instructions when I bought them.
 
When we paint, particles of the paint accumulates at the base of the brush. This pushes the hair brushes apart and affects the quality of the point we so enjoy.  That's why it's important to keep the brush clean.
 
To clean these delicate brushes, avoid strong soap which may damage the hairs and remove the natural oils.  It is suggested that you, using mild soap and cool or warm water, swirl the soapy brush in the palm of your hand and rinse. Don't forget to rinse until the soap and water runs clear. 
 
Here is the soap I use:

One other caution is to monitor the water temperature. Some believe that hot water may cause any remaining paint to clot in the hairs of the brush.

 

Once rinsed, it's time to consider reshaping the brush heads to have the point.  Now there are a lot of varying advice on this, here are some of them:

• rest brush with the bristles facing upwards to dry off.
• use your saliva to shape the bristle - careful with cadmium paints which are toxic
• tap or flick the brush on one finger recreate to force the point. This is my favourite option.

Here are a few things to avoid

• leaving them in the water with the hair end;
• using your brush with acrylic paints or inks;
• using them from scrubbing;
• dipping the ferrule of your brush into water;
• allowing your brush to dry out with paint in the tuft. 

This week's artist find is Spencer Meagher.  This is an acrylic painting abd I love the subtle changes in values and the limited palette.

 

Have a great week

Danielle