Monday, October 28, 2013

Line Shape Form Space Value COLOR... Color is our next element of Art by Texas Artist Laurie Pace

Line Shape Form Space Value Color 
"Colouring does not depend on where the colours are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form and outline, 
on where that is put. " (William Blake)
The Pumpkins began to bloom in the studio and it is now time for color.  Working in Acrylic, which is not the medium of choice for me for still life painting, I plunged ahead with student Lisa eagerly jumping into the challenge.


Both of the above are my pieces.

Remember last week, we began with just values using black and white. Now it is time to begin applying color.  I found it easier with the acrylics to do it layers letting some bleed through from below and you can watch as some change through the process.

This is Lisa at work and her progress with her pumpkins. She will be back tonight for more and we will be gearing up for TEXTURE! ( I really see a lot of texture in her current work.)




Here are my pumpkins as they are sitting right now. Some are finished, some are not. Some I am tempted to jump in with oils!





 Hummm... what to do tonight with texture. Lisa and Sheryl are you ready?
Thank you again Rebecca Zook for your inspiration with values into paintings. 
Click here to see Rebecca's incredible work using this process in her paintings.


As surely as I valued your life today, so may the Lord value my life and deliver me from all trouble.”  1 Samuel 26:24  

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Monday, October 21, 2013

Value... Elements of Art by Texas Art Teacher Laurie Pace

Line Shape Form Space Value


"Color is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire. " John Singer Sargent
  




Value, or tone, refers to the use of light and dark, shade and highlight, in an artwork.  One of my favorite painters current day that uses this in many of her pieces as an underpainting before she paints her colors in, is Texas Artist Rebecca Zook. Her work is incredible.  Working in acrylic, she lays in her values before layering the colors on top.  Texas Artist Nancy Medina, sort of does this but with transparent colors creating the forms and backgrounds of what she is painting.  When I took one of her floral workshops we worked with browns and moved forward.  

With this lesson being on values... I want to take Rebecca's challenge of the black and white acrylic painted first and then layering of color...so this week I have examples of two pumpkin paintings because I loved her pumpkin painting and Terry specifically brought me home pumpkins to work from.  Value paintings can indeed be done with any ONE COLOR (blue, green, red, etc) and adding just white or black to make dark values and intermediate values and light values. Following the thought behind Rebecca's work is to stay true to the values using black and white and all in between.  If you can access this link, you can see quite a few of her pieces she just completed using this technique by clicking here.

Okay, so I took off into the studio with two student grade canvas panels, my pumpkins and charcoal.

I find sketching in charcoal allows me freedom to easy change my areas as I sketch them in.

This is the first one with two neighboring pumpkins.


First I painted in the darkest area and the 'atmosphere' around it. I have never tried this, so we are doing it together as a first.   I normally use acrylics to form up backgrounds for my oils.. but I use one color, so painting with a brush feels strange too.


I am wondering if my values are too dark, but I am assuming until I try it I will not know.










This is actually the pumpkin we will carve. It is the tallest of the group we brought home from Whole Foods.  Terry has plans for roasted pumpkin seeds and a fresh pumpkin pie.








I snapped one a bit closer up so you could see some of the light I was trying to capture off the top of the pumpkin.  Rebecca must have so much patience to paint like this!

This is the final on this one but I forgot to finish the leaves I was going to place in the background... using imagination of the pumpkin patch itself.   

Next week I will have color added to this. Perhaps not as beautifully as Rebecca does because I am not an acrylic painter and it definitely is much harder than oils!

So get your brushes out and buy some of those little pumpkins and gourds in different colors. There are some really cool choices out there. Call it painting the gourds and get painting!

"When beginning artists understand and use values for the first time, there is usually a quantum leap in the quality of their painting." Paul deMarrais

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Fourth Element of Art by Texas Artist Laurie Pace

Line Shape Form Space


Frank Lloyd Wright said:     "Space is the Breath of Art."


By definition:  Space is an element of art; space refers to distances or areas around, between or within components of a piece. Space can be positive (white or light) or negative (black or dark), open or closed, shallow or deep and two-dimensional or three-dimensional. Sometimes space isn't actually within a piece, but the illusion of it is.

With little ones we always have donut day when I teach space...but we cannot do that over the internet.  So I took up my pencil and looked around the studio. I spotted first one of my stools in the studio... so I quickly shaded in the space around it.  Then the coffee cup holding my hot tea.... and then just a jack that was sitting on the table. (More of my work further down in the blog.)



So how can you turn this into art that it works in a composition?
Here is an example by M C Esher. 




"Sky and Water I"  is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in June 1938. The basis of this print is a regular division of the plane consisting of birds and fish.  Can you see how he took the top duck and then began developing the space around it to turn it into fish?    You can click the drawing to read more in Wikipedia.

Here is one more:


Regular Division of the Plane is a series of drawings by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which began in 1936.  This was from Wikipedia.  
Click the drawing to connect.



When I taught seventh grade art, we studied Escher and the students had to design something similar using outside space from one object evolving into another one.

Here is the one I did for the sample lesson. I took caterpillars and made them into butterflies.



Close up of the work. It was not completed as I wanted them to design and use their space in their own way. I rarely finished a project as I wanted them to see in in progress so they knew where it was and how it came to be, yet far enough along to see where it was going.





What can you do this week to work on 'space'? If you want to use paint,  I discovered this blog with a wonderful lesson on negative space for those of you with watercolors.  Click here.  Pat Howard is the teacher in this blog and she has some wonderful ideas and lessons... this would be one I would recommend to follow as I plod forward!
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Monday, October 7, 2013

Third Element of Art FORM by Texas Art Teacher Laurie Pace

Third Art Lesson
The Seven Elements of ART

Line, Shape, FORM


Form is usually the element my younger students love. Basically form is dimensional.  Form is a three-dimensional geometrical figure.  Where you normally have a circle, in form it is a sphere.  Where you have a square, in form you have a cube.  


My images shared will be from a simple project.  If you want to get fancy, do some carving, paper mache or anything that dimensionally builds shape. You can actually still do a two dimensional painting and use a palette knife and build up layers, and presto... you have form.  You can also do mixed media and have things pasted and gessoed onto the surface and that counts as form as well. 

Working with mixed media is always fun. Collaging and using different papers and objects to create art is very exciting.  Try and do some different types of art that allow you to use FORM.

I went into the studio to figure out something to share for an exercise besides carving a pumpkin or working with clay. Those are obvious Three Dimensional objects.  So how about mixing two D and three D?


First I chose colors...and decided to work with three together on the color wheel: Red, Yellow and Orange
Then I chose one opposite the Orange... which was a blue and I went with a teal type blue that had some green in it to balance the red.  Split Analogous Colors.

I rummaged around in my papers... and found these precut small watercolor papers.  I pulled out a bunch but after I grabbed a square canvas panel, I realized I only needed four. I still had no concept yet what I was going to do.

As I begin to paint the small pieces colors...like red on one side, orange on the other... I thought cool, I can paint the surface in squares. Originally my brain thought flat black, but I wanted this to build dimensionally with form, shape, line and this would do it.


See the black lines separating the shapes (Squares)?


Then I glued the square forms painting on two sides onto the surface two dimensional square.  Note that I matched up the fold to the color on the flat square. Another decision NOT pre-made but discovered as I worked.


 So simply put and made...  FORM....








This was only a small project... can you experiment this week with form? If nothing else, CARVE A PUMPKIN!

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