The many expressions of Sharon

Portrait of Sharon
Portrait of Sharon
Portrait of Sharon, 12”X17” Oil on Board

This painting was completed in June 2014 and I wanted to present it with some of its earlier stages and thoughts while I was painting it.

It started when my friend came for a visit and graciously agreed to sit for a portrait.
I set up and started painting from observation that day when she was posing for me. I later finished the portrait from her photo.

Here is how it started:
Portrait of Sharon  at the beginning

My medium was half linseed oil half mineral spirit. The mineral spirit dilutes the paint and oil and breaks the paint’s bonds, making the pigment flow similar to a watercolor and the oil keeps the pigment flowing and glossy and bonds it to the canvas. I really enjoy starting out with translucent paint and then building up paint on top of it.

I selectively rendered some parts more than others and left others simplified and flat. The idea was to create visual contrast between the rendering style of different parts thus drawing attention to the part I was most interested in, which is her eyes.

Throughout the painting process her portrait acquired a variety of subtle variations in expression. Here are some photos

The many forms of visual CONTRAST

Midsummer Eve, Edward Robert Hughes, 1908

Visual contrast is a key concept in the making of an artwork. A concept I learned from online lectures by artist Bill Perkins at NMA.

My initial concept of visual contrast was very limited. I thought that contrast consists of something visually standing out due to being darker or lighter than what’s next to it. I was aware that you could create color contrast. But his lecture really opened my eyes to the endless forms of visual contrast that take part in an artwork and shape the way we experience it.  Continue reading

Value in composition

Values is a term in art that describes how light or dark something is. It refers to the grayscale value of a color.

How light or dark something is is one of the primary ways our visual system analyzes the visual world around us. It’s how we recognize something as a shape or an outline and it clues us to understand it as an entity.

In visual art it is a primary tool to emphasize and de-emphasize elements in a work of art. More specifically than value, it is the contrast that is used to make something stand out or disappear. When you start paying attention to how it is used in art, some of those lovely paintings and the way they were composed starts seeming very deliberate and not so random. It is not just that an artist gets an inspiration and an idea of what they want to paint, it is also that they then spend time composing the values of the picture to make the theme or subject of their painting stand out. So much so that in some cases it can almost seem shamelessly composed, yet seem entirely coincidental, unintended and realistic. Continue reading

Invented Dancer figure

'Dancing Through Fire'

8”X11” Graphite on Paper. I named this one ‘Dancing through Fire’. I started it while listening to the lyrics of a song I heard on the radio earlier that day. It was a pop song about self-empowerment, but the visual image of a dancer dancing amidst flames ignited my imagination and I grabbed my sketchbook and drew a sketch of how such figure might be.

Her body posture must reflect the nature of the flames; a wild, selfish, free force reaching up for oxygen but grounded to the ground where it begins.

It needed to be uninhibited and in full force of motion.
When I was done with the figure I added shackles, which I did not initially have in mind. The pose seemed powerful and she needed to be grounded, like the flames. A powerful force ignoring its external bonds.

It stands in my mind as a symbol of life amidst difficulties; a dance as a response to shackles, saying that one’s spirit cannot be bound.

I started with the gesture, then general volumes, then anatomy and lastly all the values (the lights and darks) had to be figured out. That was the most challenging part, to imagine a light source and how this light source would influence a figure, how to arrange it all to make the figure stand out and still allow it to have dimensionality (rather than being 2 dimensional).

It was a difficult mental exercise but satisfying nonetheless.

Passion for Anatomy

Archer

Anatomy has been a delightful pursuit for the last year since my graduation from Georgetown Atelier.

I am so enamoured with it; the human body, the biological machine, an absolute beauty; sophisticated and elegant, powerful and capable of executing our will as well as express our emotions. As social beings our bodies and minds have tremendous power to communicate and perceive our mood and character.

Every artist who studies anatomy does it for a slightly different reason, I believe. Continue reading

Tree Drawings

I had a fun day going out drawing with my new watercolor sticks and a black fountain pen, sitting in the street on the sidewalk and drawing trees.

It was a fun to walk going around “hunting” for a special tree I find appealing and a way to experience an otherwise somewhat familiar neighborhood through new eyes of adventure.

What sent me on this trip to begin with was my interest in harmony of lines, in patterns – and plants are the perfect subject matter for that.

They have the same blueprint yet every leaf and branch grows differently according to its surrounding, and together they form a structure that has similar patterns and sense of movement, yet the branches and leafs are different from one another, and each plant has a different pattern than the rest. It’s random yet structured. I find them really pretty.

Study of Local values

I came across this excellent local-value study by teaching artist Melissa Weinman (website).

She drew 3 balls which she colored white, gray and black with acrylic paint, placing them under the exact same lighting conditions. The image bellow was the result.

The most important and interesting deductive use I found for this is for skin values in people and how different colored-skin individuals would appear under the same light. Continue reading

Leaves on Translucent background

I did this small study of leaves for an art event this month.

I really enjoyed trying out something new; I use mineral spirit as a medium without using any oil or gel to make the paint flow. The result is that the paint becomes much like watercolor while still allowing thicker areas where mineral spirit is not used.

The nice thing about this is that it is possible to get very bright and very chromatic at the same time Continue reading

New Studio Assistant!

Hi all. I’d like you to meet my newly hired studio assistant, Ralph. My go-to guy for abstract art and general help for rough painting days. Patty The Painting Donkey(Picture credit: Adam Harnett / CATERS NEWS)

Some days… no matter how hard you try, paintings just don’t come out right. And that’s when you call Ralph to the rescue.

Available for hire; please contact me for rates and times.