teaching painting

I thought I'd post some images of paintings I've made at the Wednesday painting class at the Hangar. These three paintings demonstrate how I try to ease people into color. Color is the most beautiful aspect of painting, but also the most confounding when trying to learn to paint; the student must first learn to express light and form in 'value' only, without the trickiness of color in the equation. The best way to learn to see and paint a truthful representation of value from life is to practice in monochrome. By that I mean black and white only. Once the student understands that 'value' is the fundamental means of expressing light and form in painting, then they can begin to practice painting from life, that is: to abstract what we "actually" see into a "re-presentation" of what we see with paint 'values'. The first painting is Angela in monochrome.

Once the student understands the fundamental means of expression in painting, then color can be introduced and begin to be coherently taught. The way to introduce color after monochrome is a "warm/cool" palette, my favorite of which is burnt umber and ultramarine blue. There are others. Now with a two color palette, the next thing after value to try to look for is varying degrees of warm colors and greys versus cool colors and greys (called 'temperature'). Flesh is warm. An orange shirt is warmer still. Blue jeans are cool, or possibly something white which is in shadow. Burnt umber and ultramarine blue neutralize each other to nearly true grey, and there is a vast range of warm and cool greys between pure saturated tints of b. umber and ultramarine. Organizing a representation of light and form taking into account 'value' AND "temperature" will yield a painting that very nearly feels like it's in full color. The second painting is Justin in a two color palette.

Next a limited chromatic palette is introduced, the first one I use is a "Franz Hals" palette of yellow ochre, terra rosa, burnt umber and ultramarine. Two more colors, a yellow and a red, are added and so along with b. umber (a warm dark) and ultramarine (a cool dark) yields a "full spectrum" of colors, although the purples and greens are very weak along with most of the lighter tints. Now with a limited chromatic palette, the student can begin to express not only 'value' and 'temperature', but also the varying colors of things (which is similar to 'temperature', but more advanced). Paintings with this palette will feel fully colored, although not very brightly so. The last painting is Charles in four colors.

cross reference to future post, click here: alexanderschaefer.blogspot.com

banco popular

I went downtown and started this scene looking west on 4th Street. I plan to return and work more on it, get some of the signage (e.g. Banco Popular) and detail in the architecture. I did a decent job resisting trying to get nitpicky detail wet into wet. I'm going to save that for when the lay-in dries... it's much easier at that point and I want my paintings to look easy, not labored or uptight. I think they do! I like the boldness and brevity of this lay-in.

Portraits on 5th Street

I brought my mobile studio to 5th and Main and painted portraits today. I paid ten dollars for 30 minutes of someone's time. There was a waiting list of people! It was awesome. All the fluster and activity, people walking by, watching, making a scene. It was crazy, and everyone had a lot of fun. They all wanted to get painted! My friend Justin watched the whole thing and has a lot of funny stories, I was oblivious to what was going on around me, being I was so wrapped up in the paintings.

Here are the five portraits I managed to finish. I'm planning to go back and do it again soon... One woman there already has a standing reservation for the next time I'm around.

animal-esque

For the last two days, Airom (artist and ringleader), Leandra (runs Art Murmur gallery), and I have installed the animal show downtown. Today at around 7:30pm we finished and I think it looks great! The only artist who couldn't show up is Jim Holyoak because he's in Canada, but his art brings him here in spirit. Here are some pics of the space with the work hung. The post-it notes will be coming down after Stephen (Leandra's business partner) makes up the list of pieces. The show opens for the artwalk this Thursday; we're all really looking forward to it!

studios and spaces

I thought I'd post some pictures of the place I work and the place I show work. Here's a picture of my outdoor studio in Eagle Rock... Yes, the ironing board is one of my favorite art work surfaces! I kind of fan the tables out in front of my and adjust them to different levels kinda like a great big, multi keyboard organ, but with paints instead of keys. Also, here a shots of the space I'm renting at the Hive for the next three months. I painted the walls grey and hung a bunch of my pieces for display. I think it looks quite nice!

crash

Hi blogger readers. I writing this to state that the reason I haven't been blogging lately is my computer crashed and I'm waiting to see what can be salvaged from the hard drive. Fortunately I recently backed work up, also my address book (phew!) but since I have to read my e-mail at the internet cafe down the street, it's put a major damper on my postings. Bummer! I'll be back on the grid soon... hopefully by the end of the week.