painting by Mary Margaret
Hi friends!
We previously discussed Drawing the Mighty Tree which can be found here as a blog post. We will take that knowledge and build on it now with environment, developing planes, clustering and dissipation of color and tone and understanding when and where to use cool and warm colors.
Planes; spatial relationships
When developing your composition, allow your eye to do much of the intelligent work of understanding and seeing distance by painting back to front; sky to foreground distance to close up; small to large. If you are going to work back into the background after establishing the fore, that’s fine; just be sure to go back in and develop at least the edges of the object in front so that it appears to be IN FRONT OF the thing behind. Your eye will do all the rest of the work once you make this ground rule your friend.
Strokes in the front, larger than behind add to a sense of perspective.
Break down shapes, chunks/clusters of light and dark; to attribute color to. Find detail and exaggerate interesting forms. Keep things organic with a sense of movement. Allow for elongation and a gentle dissipation of form to avoid large bulky or flat generalizations.
Color; cool and warm
Basically you can use this rule where all shadows consist of blues, greens, purples and grays although that is not exclusive; reds and terracottas can easily seep into cool tones as transitional elements. Build you darks and cool tones then come back on top with light and warmth. Golds, yellows, oranges and whites can be used where there is more light although a warm olive can sometimes really make warmth “real“ and light can also be expressed with cool blue so be aware and paint with your gut once you embrace the "rules"
Place highlights and / or shadows slightly within the object to avoid the look of outlining.
Clustering and Dissipation
Allow color, light and strokes to cluster and dissipate so that a cool area transitions from a cluster of cool intensity out to somewhat even amounts of warm and cool and finally all warm tones and color. This gradation is vital to a natural look. If all areas remain stagnant; dotted evenly throughout an area, the eye does not move in a natural way from distance to fore and vise versa.
Chopping in chunks of color
I sometimes call the manner of working “chopping in” when one allows bits and chunks of color to break into one another, back and forth; cool to warm and warm to cool; dissipating and clustering. This is often quite effective with knife as we build texture, as objects come closer toward us and we see chunks of detail and light!
Our eyes mix color; paint does not have to do all the work!
Use as much variety of color as possible in this type of work to add vitality and interest. Sky does not have to be blue, grass does not have to be green etc.; PLAY and learn color!
Keep imagery uneven, staggered and interesting!
When painting any object, imagine you are actually painting, texturing and touching AROUND that object to develop strokes which emulate it's mood and volume.
All the best and we will develop all and more in time! B
We previously discussed Drawing the Mighty Tree which can be found here as a blog post. We will take that knowledge and build on it now with environment, developing planes, clustering and dissipation of color and tone and understanding when and where to use cool and warm colors.
Planes; spatial relationships
When developing your composition, allow your eye to do much of the intelligent work of understanding and seeing distance by painting back to front; sky to foreground distance to close up; small to large. If you are going to work back into the background after establishing the fore, that’s fine; just be sure to go back in and develop at least the edges of the object in front so that it appears to be IN FRONT OF the thing behind. Your eye will do all the rest of the work once you make this ground rule your friend.
Strokes in the front, larger than behind add to a sense of perspective.
Break down shapes, chunks/clusters of light and dark; to attribute color to. Find detail and exaggerate interesting forms. Keep things organic with a sense of movement. Allow for elongation and a gentle dissipation of form to avoid large bulky or flat generalizations.
Color; cool and warm
Basically you can use this rule where all shadows consist of blues, greens, purples and grays although that is not exclusive; reds and terracottas can easily seep into cool tones as transitional elements. Build you darks and cool tones then come back on top with light and warmth. Golds, yellows, oranges and whites can be used where there is more light although a warm olive can sometimes really make warmth “real“ and light can also be expressed with cool blue so be aware and paint with your gut once you embrace the "rules"
Place highlights and / or shadows slightly within the object to avoid the look of outlining.
Clustering and Dissipation
Allow color, light and strokes to cluster and dissipate so that a cool area transitions from a cluster of cool intensity out to somewhat even amounts of warm and cool and finally all warm tones and color. This gradation is vital to a natural look. If all areas remain stagnant; dotted evenly throughout an area, the eye does not move in a natural way from distance to fore and vise versa.
Chopping in chunks of color
I sometimes call the manner of working “chopping in” when one allows bits and chunks of color to break into one another, back and forth; cool to warm and warm to cool; dissipating and clustering. This is often quite effective with knife as we build texture, as objects come closer toward us and we see chunks of detail and light!
Our eyes mix color; paint does not have to do all the work!
Use as much variety of color as possible in this type of work to add vitality and interest. Sky does not have to be blue, grass does not have to be green etc.; PLAY and learn color!
Keep imagery uneven, staggered and interesting!
When painting any object, imagine you are actually painting, texturing and touching AROUND that object to develop strokes which emulate it's mood and volume.
All the best and we will develop all and more in time! B
