Planning And Selection

Demonstration Step-By-Step

The Snapshot

In choosing the scene you are to photograph, be sure not only that it serves your purpose but that it stimulates and excites you. You cannot do a commendable piece of work unless you are deeply interested in the        subject matter. In this case, you can refer to the final watercolor on pages 104 and 105 to see the kind of inspiration I got from this particular snapshot.    

The photo I have chosen for these demonstrations interested me because of its shapes. When I work from a photograph, I find it less constraining to use it as an embryo, using only the basic forms of the picture from which to construct my painting. I first made several pencil roughs to deter- mine what to retain and what to invent. This photo was taken by me and was not intended to be a great example of photography. I would suggest that you use your own photos and not something that has appeared in a publication because it can be dangerous to originality. Somebody else has done all the thinking to produce that particular picture.

The Thumbnail Sketch

On the bottom of the page are four thumbnail sketches which were made from the snapshot on the preceding page. In making my thumbnails, I purposely chose the four seasons to show that you are not bound to the particular season in which the    photograph was taken and also to show how much latitude there is for one's creativity.

Note that in all four of the sketches I     have retained the background almost in its entirety. Only the foreground and middle distance has been changed. I chose to do the autumn scene. To me, a native Mid-westerner, autumn is the most inspiring season in New England.

The following five pages contain the balance of this demonstration from the final drawing which, as can be seen, developed from one of the thumbnail sketches to the final painting spread on pages 104 and 105.

step 1. Sponge sky area wet into the hills. Use a very light wash of ochre in the sky and, while the sky is still damp, use Payne's gray for cloud effects, using a three-inch soft brush. While all this is still wet, paint over entire hill area with ultramarine blue and burnt umber.

step 2. Throw a wash of lemon yellow and ochre over the large hill; then for the general tone of fall blend over the entire picture a very light wash of the following colors: Indian red, cadmium red, Hooker's green, cadmium yellow, Rembrandt green or viridian. Mix these colors on the paper, not on the palette, but be sure they are mixed. Remember also to leave all white areas white.

step 3. When the paper is dry, apply second value of distant hill, leaving the first value as is. After this is dry, paint the thin value of the hills ant continue this deepening value sequence until al the hills are completed While the hill area is drying, continue working in the foreground, spot ting your trees and vegetation. In other words keep your painting moving.

step 4. You are now near ing the final stage of you completed picture. Pain the main hill {final color is shown in the complex ed painting on the spread 104 and 105). The dark areas throughout, especially the shadow areas is the base of the painting help to pull the picture together.

Green Mountains

Contrast

In the painting on page 108 an Arctic scene is shown. In the Arctic regions, of course, the vegetation is sparse because there is little sunlight during nine months of the year. This utter bleakness has a stark, dramatic quality which gives the picture power; the rays in the background emphasize this point. The picture was painted in cold colors typical of the region. The only warm color used was in the sky. The effect of the rays was obtained by using a gritty eraser.

The Mexican scene on page 109 was painted almost entirely with a warm palette. Blues were used in the shadow area of the tarpaulin. All sunlit areas were left light. The scene was painted in Tomazunchale, Mexico.

In painting each of the two contrasting pictures, I made the pencil notations for color to aid me in completing the paintings later in the studio. These are rough thumbnail sketches showing how the paintings were planned.

Painting A Country Store

The reason I chose this particular country store was neither because of its setting nor its beauty, but because it took me back to another era. There seems to be an overpowering nostalgia about a country store with its incredibly varied merchandise (from horse shoes to the latest cosmetics), its mail delivery, its hot stove in winter. It is an atmosphere in which city folk become relaxed because tension is lacking. It is this atmosphere that you should seek to create in your picture, not merely the visible forms that confront you.

Yesterday's Treasures

Whenever you are painting a picture of a bygone day, try to project yourself into the mood and pace of the era, whether it be the excitement of an election eve in the '90's or the acrid smell of a blacksmith shop. If the mood is captured, your picture will make people stop and look, which is exactly what the artist, no matter how modest, wants them to do.

The sequence on the facing page shows how to paint a country store. It will be noted that the drawing bears little resemblance to the snapshot. Since this particular telephone pole has little charm, with or without hand woven baskets, it was deleted along with the tree to the left. By removing the baskets in front and leaving things behind the window vague, yours can be a general store or any other kind of store you care to letter on the windows. While I have stuck rather closely to the outline of the building and wings, I have cleaned things up a bit by making the three second-story windows to the right the same size and shape, narrowing down the dormer to give it a better proportion, increasing the number of panes in the large window on the right wing and increasing the size of the window in the end of that wing.

step 1. Paint Sky. When sky is dry, paint first wash of hills using raw umber, permanent blue, cobalt and Antwerp blue, leaving the white area for now.

step 2. Paint trees in hills using Indian red, burnt umber, burnt sienna, cadmium orange, Hooker's green, sepia, ultramarine blue and blend all together on paper.
step 3. Put in trunks of trees using sepia and alizarin crimson and ivory black for dark trunks. Place shadows on roof and side first wash.

step 4. Finish painting, saving detail for last. Intensify all dark values.

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