Lessons in Art: elements of Art

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

Laurie Pace

A Texas Artist

My Blog

My Website

Giclees on Canvas, Prints and Cards

GALLERY LINKS

Mirada Fine Art Denver CO,

The Rare Gallery Jackson Hole WY

The White Dog Gallery Carbondale, CO.

The Dutch Art Gallery Dallas TX

South Hill Gallery, Lexington, KY

SR Gallery Hong Kong

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.