painting technique

You are currently browsing articles tagged painting technique.

Avoiding the pasted-on look

16 August 2009 in art technique, painting by David | No comments

Sometimes you look at a painting in which each passage is competently executed, but the overall look just doesn’t hold together. The parts don’t look like they exist in the same visual space. Usually, the problem is with inconsistent keying, with edge control, or both.

Key

Key refers, of course, the the range of colors in the painting. The most important key is the value key. If the degree of light and dark on one object doesn’t fit that of other objects in the painting, then they won’t look like they belong together. It’s easy to get so involved in one particular passage that its value key doesn’t fit that of other parts of the painting. Another possible look, besides that of being pasted-on, is that some passages fade out inexplicably.

It is, of course, possible to similarly mess up the chroma key or the hue key of the painting. Value is a more common and noticeable problem, however.

The best way to avoid inconsistencies in key is to frequently step way back from the painting and either squint or throw your eyes slightly out of focus. Inconsistencies tend to stand out.

Edges

Another way to inadvertently achieve a pasted-on look is to make all your edges equally hard. If all of the edges are the same, then all of the objects appear to come forward equally and the painting fails the verisimilitude test. Some otherwise excellent academic realists make this mistake. So do many beginners who have begun to develop the ability to render.

Softer edges recede, harder edges advance. Control edges and you control the dimensionality of each object in the painting. Do that consistently and the painting looks like each passage is part of a whole.

You might also be interested in these posts

Tags: , ,

Oil priming a panel

12 October 2008 in David's work, art materials, artists, oil painting by David | 2 comments

After doing some priming this evening, I thought it might be helpful to describe how I do it. My method is based on Rob Howard’s recommendations for using the primer from Studio Products. I’m using their white lead/black oil primer, now discontinued. The approach should work for any oil primer, such as the newer SP titanium black oil primer, or the lead white oil primers from Williamsburg or Doak.

  1. This needs to be done in a well-ventilated room.
  2. Cut the panel to size. Sand the edges down so that they are smooth and slightly rounded (chamfered).
  3. Clean the surface of the panel thoroughly with denatured alcohol. Give it a few minutes to evaporate away.
  4. Apply a layer of primer with a knife. I use a plastic palette knife. You can also use one of those wide plastic house painting knives, but I find the sharp corners leave grooves. You could also use a brush, but it would be slow work. If the primer is too thick to spread easily, you can thin it slightly with solvent. Apply the primer quite thinly.
  5. Take a soft fan brush and wet it with solvent. Lightly feather it over the primed surface, smoothing out all of the bumps and grooves. When the brush picks up primer, wipe it with a cloth, wet it again, and continue until you’ve smoothed the entire surface.
  6. Let the panel dry leaning face-in against a wall. This will help keep dust from falling on it. Allow about 4-5 days to dry.
  7. Repeat with a second layer.
  8. Allow at least a month, preferably several months, to cure. It’s best to do several panels at a time, several times a year, so that you always have a couple of panels in preferred sizes ready to go.

Oil primed surfaces are very pleasant to work on, although it takes time to get used to how smooth and non-absorbent they are.

You might also be interested in these posts

Tags: , , , ,

Flat space

21 April 2008 in art technique, artists, painting by David | 2 comments

Some 20th-century realists, such as David Hockney, tend to paint a blank wall as, well, blank. By that I mean that they mix up some color and paint that wall a flat tone. No texture, no color variation, just one plain color. If the blank wall has, say, a cast shadow falling on it, they will paint that, but the shadow will also be just one undifferentiated color, just like the light portion of the wall. Skies, tabletops, streets—even skin tones—tend to get the same treatment.

That doesn’t work for me. First of all, it’s not “realistic,” in that human vision (at least as I experience it as a human with functioning vision) never has areas of flat color. If I look at a plain wall, it has constant variations in hue, chroma, and value. I just don’t see any flat color there.

That doesn’t mean the artist can’t paint it flat if that’s the way it looks to him or her, or if that evokes a certain feeling the artist wants to reference. But the big problem with flatness is that it distances me emotionally from the painting. Flat color pushes me away. It says, “there isn’t anything to see here—this space intentionally left blank.” A flat area of color emphasizes the reality that the painting itself is flat. The painting becomes less realist and more abstract, in a way that I find unappealing. Flat paintings are more “modern” (in the sense of being more 20th century), but that’s not a selling point as far as I am concerned. I like simplicity in paintings, but not that kind of simplicity.

By contrast, texture pulls me into the painting. It can be used to create a sense of mystery, as in the subtle darks of a Rembrandt painting. It communicates more about the visual reality that the painter is attempting to lure me into observing. It gives me a reason to spend more time looking, and from the standpoint of a painter, that is never a bad thing.

As a result, I spend lots of time with the “blank” parts of my paintings. I typically use multiple layers and think about how much texture and color variation to apply. Some blank areas get more attention than detail areas. That doesn’t show so much in a photograph of the painting—but that’s just one more reason why the original is better than any reproduction. And that, from the standpoint of a painter, is an excellent thing.

You might also be interested in these posts

Tags: ,