Two Shores: Step 5
Satisfied with the color scheme and general layout of the clouds in the background, it’s time to work out the same kind of fixed color scheme for the water, which is the only other area of the painting that really needs its color scheme fixed before I can start on the bridge.
The colors of the water, of course, are directly based on those of the sky, which is why it’s important to be satisfied with the sky colors before moving on to this stage. If you look carefully at the colors I have in the water here, you’ll notice that they are actually opposite what would ordinarily appear in nature. Naturally, the warm reddish color at the base of the horizon would appear reflected on the most distant (topmost) part of the water, and the rest of the water would be filled with cloud color. But I really like the way the red interacts with the dark burnt umber below it.
It creates a warm transition on the horizon that I decide to duplicate in the transition between the water and foreground area. So by placing the red at the bottom of the water area, I’m committing an intentional and rather blatant violation of the laws of physics for the sake of satisfying my personal aesthetic desires. And, well, that’s the kind of liberty an artist can take, and one I personally believe an artist should take when necessary.
Those who insist on strict adherence to nature should, in my opinion, invest in a nice camera.
I also decide not to reproduce the cloud colors in the water exactly as they appear in the sky. To create a more exaggerated sense of “water color”, I’ve decided to make the reflected cloud colors slightly greener than they appear in the sky. This also helps to make the reflection a bit more pronounced, as I think will be apparent later on. By changing the colors in the water just slightly from the those in the sky, I’m providing a subtle visual reminder that we’re looking at separate areas, and that the colors in the water are a reflection. This isn’t something that a viewer will likely notice consciously, but it will contribute to the overall effect of the painting very subtly and is something I have to think about at this stage.
Finally, I go ahead and block in the foreground area in burnt umber so I can create the same subtle blending of the border with the water that I created with the sky and horizon in step 4. The areas that I’ve blocked in with burnt umber are going to remain dark areas of the painting, and the umber itself is actually an approximation of their final value. As you can see, I intend for them to remain quite dark in contrast to the sky and water. As with the step before, all my paint application at this point is very loose.
I’ll worry about the details later. For now, the important thing is to get the colors right.
November 22nd, 2004 at 4:30 pm
Since the day I first saw “The Weight of the World: Atlas in a New Age,” I have become a great admirer of your art. My giclee of “Atlas” hangs in the upstairs hall of my house and I pause every time I pass it. “Self Portrait II” hangs on a prominent wall of my living room. Each morning as I head towards the foyer, seeing your image reminds me that as you created “The Weight of the World,” so I must go out and create my life each day. Keep up the fantastic work.
November 24th, 2004 at 3:45 pm
Thanks for the comment, Sean, and thanks for commissioning the “Self Portrait 2″. Commissions like that give me the opportunity to create some things that I otherwise can’t usually go out of my way to produce. It’s always nice to be reminded that there are folks out there who have a genuine appreciation for more intimate subject matter such as self portraits. A request like that is always a very pleasant surprise.
November 24th, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Damon,
Looks good so far. I wanted to ask about canvas sizes. What factors go in to your decision of what size to paint on? Certainly, some paintings are more elaborate and beg to be painted on a 4 foot wide canvas. But I’m sure many other paintings could go either way?
November 26th, 2004 at 2:00 pm
I love this question, Brian. It may come as a surprise to those who read this, but large scale paintings are not, by their size alone, more difficult to paint than small ones. You’d think, considering the difference in basic square inches that must be covered with paint, that large-scale painting would be a much more difficult and time consuming undertaking. But in my experience, that just isn’t true. It certainly costs more, but for example, it took me the same amount of time just to paint the tiled floor in “October Eve” (32 x 16 inches) as it did to complete the entire painting “An Awakening Mind” (60 x 30 inches).
There are a lot of things to consider when choosing a size for a subject. There are practical concerns, for example: It’s always nice if you can work it up as a “standard” frame size, which means it will be much easier and less expensive to frame it in the end. I’m rarely able to do that, however, as standard frame sizes were not chosen with figurative painting in mind. It’s more expensive to paint a large painting. I know Bryan (Larsen) just bought an $80.00 four oz tube of cerulean blue expressly for painting the sky in a large painting, so you can see what I mean.
But these kinds of things are usually secondary influences to actual technical factors. When you have your composition in mind, you have to predict how much work will go into the various parts depending on the scale you choose. If you know there is going to be a lot of minute detail in, say, the extreme foreground, it’s usually easier to paint on a smaller scale, which allows you to drop down the intensity of your rendering without making the other high detail areas seem out of step. In my painting, “Autumn’s First Breath” (60 x 40 inches), I think I spent about 3 weeks just painting the embroidery on the figure’s dress. If she had been 2 feet tall instead of 4.5, I could have just suggested the embroidery with a day’s worth of brushwork. Then again, when certain details are essential to your composition and can’t be reduced down, it’s always easier to paint them on a larger scale. I once (woefully) spent many days painting each of several dozen high intensity areas of a painting that were each only 2 x 2 inches in size. Each area took me about one 10 hour day to complete. If I had chosen a larger scale, my work would have been ridiculously less labor intensive, and my private life would probably have been much more gratifying that month to boot.
There are also pricing concerns. Large paintings usually cost a lot more than small ones, which means less people can afford them. Yet large paintings are usually much more visually impressive in person, so some (more grandiose) subjects would lose a lot of their potential BANG if you didn’t give them a scale that would grant them the presence they need–I doubt Bryan’s “Heroes” would have been nearly as overwhelming if he’d only painted it to be 12 inches tall.
Generally speaking, I scale my paintings so the primary figure’s head is about the size of a fist. If I go smaller than that, I have to dumb down the detail of the face–and since I think the human face is a truly marvelous thing, I hate to have to do that. The eyes in particular are, as they say, the window to your soul. And no one wants their soul peeking out of tiny little windows (at least, not in America anyway). Some factors might force me to paint larger or smaller, such as minute details or concerns of how visually powerful I want the final piece to be, but the one-fist-head (gotta love that name) is a pretty good guideline for most paintings. So in that sense, the scale of most of my paintings completely cater to the human face, which is, after all, usually the most important part of the painting to begin with.