Getting back to greyscale painting

 

In continuing studying from Sorolla paintings, this week I committed to just painting one of his works in greyscale with the three value approach method and gradually building on top. This non destructive process allowed me to more experiment with the mixer brush without loosing the over form and structure of the piece as I was intent of where I put my first two values focusing on the light and dark shapes. I really like this process as it helps me to commit early on not get bog down trying to figure out the lighting and composition halfway through a painting. It really gets you to build a good foundation first to paint on top of and gradually build up. Next week my intention is too continue building on greyscale painting. 

October Artist Study_ Joaquín Sorolla

Recently had the urge to get back into studying master's of the past, so I decided  for the remainder of this month I would look and analyse the works of Joaquín Sorolla and his masterful paintings, in attempt to learn his approach to colour and composition and his methods of grouping values when composing a pleasing image. I feel as though I have learnt a great deal from this experience and still have a lot more to learn about the theory behind light and colour. 

What was most notable about this painting is about how the artist effectively made use of subtle hue and temperature shifts and in the wide range of colour particularly in the figures jacket as well as other surrounding areas in the piece. I also really like how he has made the distribution of his shapes with in a square image canvas which I often find difficult to work with. 

Overall I am pleased how much I was able to accomplish in the week and what I got out from this  artist. I would say the area I most struggled with was identifying the form of the subjects hands and keeping transition of values subtle yet recognisable. The other area would be sleeves where I could pick out subtle greenish grey tones and yet not make it too jarring or prominent to the viewer.

In the coming in weeks I plan to look at more of Sorolla paintings and try to see what more I can pick out from this great master. Perhaps maybe look into how he construct his values, by producing a series of black and white or greyscale studies of his painting.

Process and Approaches to painting

 

This assignment got me to explore a range of techniques and approaches to painting digitally. This was the first lesson of Sam Nielsen's lighting for story class. I fully enjoyed this exercise and experimented each process by combining a variety of steps and mixing them together to develop new approaches of painting that is both efficient and flexible leaving enough freedom for creativity. 

Hatching Light and shadow

This assignments was a review on indicating shadow and light by a method of directional hatching and building forms by following the contours of the figure, each study was roughly 45min. The biggest challenge was getting the strokes to describe the direction of the structure of the plane and hatching with consistency as well as with confidence and intent without loosing any of the underlying foundation. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and would definitely come back to doing these exercises again in the future as a warm up. It has been a different experience as this method of building form and light has been new to me and something that i wish to continue perhaps implementing in future pieces. Further more continue to develop and build on as i experiment more with this kind of technique and approach.

Hatching Gradients

Practising hatching gradients on these figure silhouette was a great exercise that i would recommend both beginner and seasoned artist try and attempt. It requires paying great attention to how you control the lines and thickness of your strokes whilst attempting to achieve a soft and calm transition of values from dark to light or vice versa. The biggest challenge for me was achieving a smooth gradient with no overlapping dark lines or indecisive stokes without having rough edges. If I was to tackle this assignment again in the future, I would possibly tell myself to be more conscious about the way I apply my strokes and take into account of the direction of the strokes and the density of the lines. I particularly noticed that i struggle doing these digitally and that pencil would be a much easier tool to get the lightness i wanted. 

Hatching_Figures

This exercise was from a class on schoolism on deconstructing figures and anatomy. The aim and goal of the task is to practice hatching strokes to build form and volume with certain directional mark making to describe shapes and simplify the figure to its simplest and clear silhouette. I found it fairly challenging and difficult on what direction of the marks should chosen as intention of what should be defined and essential to communicate. Next is to practice building values through hatching and building form with density of strokes, which something i have never tried tackling before and is out of my comfort zone. The best thing i took away from these assignments was the importance of observation and the skill to visualise any subject to its most basic forms.

Mark making and setting new goals in Art

Mark making with pen and pencil has always been an interesting exercise and worth exploring. The act of making certain decisions when describing form and texture holds its very own challenges even without getting to thought of shadow and rendering light.These six 45 minuet studies are the result of an in depth analysis of old masters and observation of various hatching techniques. They were great fun however sufficiently challenging in order to help me develop my hand eye co-ordination and create marks across the page with intent and confidence.

Drawing from the same reference image six times each with time limit of 45min was a great way to study the structure of the face and where the planes of the faces are. The main things we discovered  was that  observation and the way you interpenetrate certain subject matter can aid the development of a personal style. Direct hatching from the get go has proven to be a great exercise in building confidence for visualising shapes and silhouettes. Portraits were a great way to experiment with shapes and mark making and making varied strokes with alternating direction to build and describe form and value. Certain marks can convey certain material and textures with very decisive strokes ranging from thin to broad with also a rang of overlapping lines to make unique qualities in the surfaces of an object. Personally i find describing the material of fabrics and cloth easier than metal something more hard surface or subtle like jelly or bubble. I feel that practising these digitally are equally important to maintain a sufficient muscle memory when transferring to tablet and a cintiq.