painting process

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Keep working until it’s done

10 April 2009 in art technique, painting, personal by David | 5 comments

Keep working on a painting until you’re sure it’s finished. Then come back again a few days later and work on it some more if you realize it’s not as good as you thought it was.

That seems like a “duh” kind of statement, but it’s inconsistent with lots of art book advice. We are told that it takes two to make a painting: an artist to do the work, and someone else to hit him (or her) on the head before it gets ruined. Freshness and spontaneity above all, we are told. Never overwork the paint.

That advice was a problem for me until I realized what a crock it is. My problem isn’t a lack of freshness—it’s that I am so often tempted to stop too soon. I get parts of the painting to look really good and the rest basically not too bad, so I want to stop rather than put in the extra hours needed to get the hard parts exactly right. That whole “freshness” canard is an excuse for laziness—something seen in the work of many a marginal painter of approximate smears.

If you really want the painting to look like you got every part of it right the first time (i.e., “fresh”), then do what Sargent did and continually scrape off anything that didn’t come out exactly right and paint it again. And again. And again, until it is correct in it’s calculated appearance of perfect spontaneity. Even if you have to paint it 100 times.

If a look of freshness is not what you’re after (it’s not something I’m all that interested in, myself) then just keep painting until there isn’t anything you know how to do that will make it better.* If you’re not willing to keep at it until the difficult parts look right, then you’re not serious about painting.

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*Or you realize that this painting is just a dog and trash it. You should allow yourself to do that only very rarely, however.

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Newbury Street

28 March 2009 in art technique, demo/in progress, oil painting, painting by David | No comments

Here’s a recent painting; I thought I might provide some detail on how it was made.

This is “Newbury Street,” oil on panel, 20 × 20”. Many artists shy away from the square picture format, because it can be hard to achieve a dynamic composition within such a stable frame. I worked on overcoming that within a simple “bullseye” composition with a bit of tension between the jacket and its shadow. I think I succeeded fairly well with that.

The panel, which I had primed with lead white, had been curing for more than six months. Different sources suggest different amounts of time to let an oil ground cure; anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months. I can say that this well-cured surface was excellent to work on.

Click on a thumbnail to see the full-sized image.

I started with an underpainting using a mixture of raw umber mixed with a small amount of Studio Products Tuscan red (a bright iron oxide pigment). Unusually for me, I used the wipeout technique for the underpainting. I did that by smearing on a bunch of thinned paint in any given area, then wiping it back. I used a mixture of mineral spirits and linseed oil, with a bit of turps. Then I used a bristle bright brush to wipe the paint back. A bright is good for this because the short bristles allow for easy scrubbing. The idea is to wipe the paint away, letting the white ground show through in the lights and letting the paint stay thick in the darks.

Normally, I avoid the wipe out technique because I don’t think that thinning paint down a lot is a good idea—it can generate a paint layer that is not properly bound in the oil vehicle. However, because the oil primed surface was smooth and not absorbent, I found that I only needed to thin the paint down just a bit in order to use the wipe out method effectively. It allowed me to easily get the structure of the painting down quickly and easily, and to correct errors easily using a rag dipped in thinner. Because there was some linseed oil in the thinner, the final result was a surface that was clearly well-bound, as I could not easily scratch it with a fingernail or rub any pigment off.

Once that was dry (within a day, due to the siccative properties of the raw umber), I painted in the background and shadow. That took a few days to dry. Then I applied a very thin layer of Studio Products glazing medium to the surface of the painting and began working my way over the painting, attempting to paint something close to the final effect in each area before moving on to the next. That took several painting sessions.

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“Feeling Creative”

31 January 2009 in personal by David | No comments

Merlin Mann on the work involved in being an artist:

But, let’s be honest. This is a tough idea to sell to folks with “real jobs” who are just looking for a diverting bit of creative tourism or who find themselves yearning for a nostalgic amble past a mostly-abandoned adolescent arts hobby. People who want to learn how to feel creative. To feel successful. To feel like an artist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

My sense, though, is that for most people who repeatedly do (and sell) creative work, this all seems a bit like wanting to feel like a world-class athlete. Because “feeling creative” produces great work in approximately the same way that “feeling like a doctor” makes you a gifted thoracic surgeon.

He’s hitting what I hope has been an enduring theme here. Regardless of talent, if you don’t show up and put in the hours, you don’t get good, and the paintings don’t get painted.

Read the whole thing.

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Stepping back

2 April 2008 in art technique, painting by David | 1 comment

One thing I try to do frequently when painting (and don’t do quite frequently enough) is to step back about ten feet and look at it. It’s a good idea to do that at least every few minutes. By stepping back, you pull yourself away from focusing on the passage you’re working on right now and look at how all the parts relate to the whole. You see mistakes in proportion, symmetry, form, composition, color, and value. You see, literally, the big picture. And you work the kinks out of your back.

If you can’t remember to do this, then force it. Keep your palette 10 feet behind you so you have to step away. Keep the painting next to the thing you are painting, so you have to step back to a station point to see the view that you are painting. Or set a kitchen timer to go off every five minutes. Whatever you need to do to make yourself step away often is a worthwhile exercise.

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