What story does your painting tell?

When I'm at an art show, it's often easy to break the ice with those in my booth by telling them the story behind a painting. Many art admirers want a painting to speak to them.  However, I have noticed that some people do not offer stories for different reasons. In some cases, the inspiration for the painting might be very personal. In other cases, some artists are private persons.

Consider that when someone is interested in buying your painting, they will likely live longer with the painting than you have had it.  That's why some people want to know all about the painting and the artist, they seek that connection that they will have in their mind every time they see the painting in their home.

The question of a painting telling a story also helps the artist focus on certain aspects of the painting. This could be a mood, an item, capturing a moment and expression. It could be any number of things, even a colour or a process.

As you paint, keep asking the question about the story your painting tells. This will help you identify what is the dominant element of your painting, and why you chose to emphasize it. What does the painting say about you as an artist, particularly to someone who’s never seen your work before? Some artists keep notes on the stories their paintings tell and store them with their paintings.

I have no doubt that paintings that have a story will create more interest than just another lonely painting fighting for attention among the numerous paintings that exist. 

Here is a related Ted Talk on this by Tracy Chevalier: Finding the story inside the painting.

Today's artist find is Ann Balch.

Have a great week

Danielle

Attributes of plein air easels

It's the time of the season when artists go outside to paint.  If this is your first year of plein air painting, you might want to acquire a good easel. So here are attributes for picking an easel for your needs:

• Weight:  seek out portability and super light weight. This means having an easel that is less then a few pounds. Aluminum easels tend to be lighter.
• Painting surface:  this area must be tiltable to various degrees (from flat to vertical). Some easels can hold various size surfaces, while other only hold up to 1/4 sheets. Consider what your needs are including robustness since with some easels, the angle of the surface changes with light pressure.
• Palette shelf:  it's practical to have a shelf to put your palette
• Misc. add-ons to consider:  here are some features that you might find on some easels:   brush holder, water pail hook, umbrellas, paint box
• Ease of set up and stability: consider how sturdy are the legs, is the surface stable,
• Height: it's useful to be able to adjusts the painting surface to different heights for sitting and standing

Today's artist find is Armand Carbrera:

Have a great week

Danielle

Placement of the Horizon

How much does the placement of the horizon affect the effectiveness and emotional feel of a painting?

The placement of the horizon impacts the foreground, middle ground or background. When planning your painting, you must determined the portion of the painting you want more depth and interest.  The farther the horizon is from the center, the more dramatic the overall effect. On other occasions it is better to place the horizon higher up or lower down in the frame as it will give your paintings more depth and interest. The placement of the horizon line is determined by which parts of the scene contain the visual information you think is the most important.

Low horizon:

• Tend to suggest greater depth of space (emphasis is on the sky/background);
• Used if your sky is to be an important then make the horizon low to draw more attention to the large sky;
• Select this option when top half of the frame was much more interesting than the bottom, you may want to adjust your composition so that the horizon is a lot lower in the painting;
• Heighten the isolation of subjects at the horizon;
• Can create an atmosphere of emptiness by contrasting it with the vastness of the sky.

Middle horizon:

• Tend to make for a more static composition and painting, since there may not be any hierarchy between foreground, middle and background;
• Suggest that there is no distinction between what's important, or that everything is important (if that is possible);
• Make it look more like two separate paintings;
• Can be effectively sometimes when you want to catch mirror reflections in pond or lake scenes.

High horizon:

• Highlight lots of land or water and little sky;
• Focus the landscape as the most important part,
• Focuses the interest onto the subject and foreground;
• Enhance sense of distance.

One final point, in fact it should have been the first point, wherever you decide to place the horizon in your paintings, make sure it is level, a slanting horizon looks unnatural and unbalanced and could easily spoil your a painting.

In addition to the photo, today I'm sharing this Youtube video of CORNELIU DRAGAN TARGOVİSTE's painting  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abgwbb27z1s&list=TLysUkq4C8ZCsxNjA0MjAxNg

Have a great week

Danielle

Painting Shadows like Thomas Schaller

Since I started painting, I've always love seeing Thomas Schaller's watercolours. His paintings are always full of light. In the past week, I re-watched his video entitled Capturing Light in Watercolours - How to Paint Cities.

When most artist paint shadows, they use mainly neutral colours. In T. Schaller's paintings the shadows are a big part of the story of his paintings. The shadows are filled with warm gold colours - he refers to them as luminous shadows.

Here are some of my observations from this video, in particular his unique approach to shadows.

He lays a first wash while the paper is on the easel at a good angle to allow gravity to assist. It is important to paint quickly but still plan the brush strokes.  He is careful to preserve small areas of untouched paper - such as a break in the sky or the distant thread of water beyond.

He likes to keep the paper wet so that he can paint from light to dark and keep things connected. This also helps the colours "breathe" into each other and to achieve warm and cool combinations.

As he paints, he creates various types of edges and toggles from one type of edge to the other.  For a larger wash, he gradually changes the colour of the wash from the top to bottom - the changes of colours are seamless and offer no distraction but show light. He starts connecting shapes with the first wash.  In the shadow areas, he likes to juxtapose near complementary colours so that beautiful neutral tones are created organically.  The toggle between warm and cool is exciting.

Once the first wash completed and allowed to become almost dry - but not entirely since the bottom portion is still fairly wet - T. Schaller quickly begins the second wash.  Again he toggles between warm and cool colours on the same façade and then connects shapes  to ensure everything feels like it belongs.  This makes the colours vibrate and create a magical effect.

He loves to paint luminous shadows with the concept of bounced light.  For this, he charges his brush with cadmium orange or bright yellow to illuminate the underside of a deep overhang. In other areas, he drops red and gold in the shadow areas to interject warm colours.

He doesn't often mix his colours. The colours out of the tube mix together on the wet paper.  Use of sediment colours is recommended to avoid the creation of mud, but you may need to encourage them to mix with a spray.

Here are a few of his paintings. Have a close look at the shadow areas:

Have a great week

Danielle