Tulips & Thoughts on Color

This time of year, with the icy world outdoors a sea of grays & white, I find myself picking up a pot of tulips or daffodils at the grocery store.  I used to consider flowers a waste of money, but now I know the value to my artist's soul in having their color & beauty in my life.  And what a lovely subject for a nature journal drawing.

I feel I have discovered color freedom with my color wheel.  Contrasting complementary colors add a vividness to my drawings these days.  I realize my old watercolor teacher, Bess Tucker, was right when she  dubbed me a colorist.  I now happily embrace that title, and am exploring possibilities every time I pick up a colored pencil or bottle of ink. 

Winter Nature Journal Observations

The snow falls; the temperatures drop, and I turn to my wild relations and my nature journal, brew up a pot of tea, and sit by the window to sketch birds.  

Song Sparrows & Juncos hop just the other side of my window, and feed on the tiny Basil seeds in my planters.  Is that a spicy meal?  Is it warming? I count the songbirds another reason to leave my Basil plants to go to seed rather than nip the flower buds as the gardening books instruct.  

Bumblebees love the flowers in the summer, and now I know the seeds feed my wild bird friends, too.

I trod through the snow down the hill to where a cottonwood sapling grows among spruces and pines.  Drawing with colored pencils allows me to really see the colors and branching patterns in the trees that catch my eye.  Twenty minutes of sketching passes in a moment, and I find myself calmer, more grounded.

Now I have captured a piece of winter between the pages of my journal, a moment in my life that I can come back to next August when I am dripping with sweat.  The more I draw in my nature journal, the more I realize how important sketching nature is to my self care. 

Electric Spaghetti Figure Drawing with Model David

My Osher Figure Drawing class has covered some interesting ground this semester -- from charcoal and pastel drawings to upside-down drawings, to creating "Electric Spaghetti" collaborative gestures through the Annotation function on Zoom.  

My students experienced a burst of creativity and excitement with last week's "Collaborative Neon Gestures," so I repeated the activity.  David took the pose, I gave the start cue, and magically, colorful lines started piling up within & on David's form. We paused, and David took another pose, complementary to the first, and the electric spaghetti lines completed the composition.

This week, some of my students expanded into drawing features and shadows.  In this time of isolation, connecting with each other in a collective drawing felt like victory.  And a refreshing way to play.

We changed gears back to using paper and charcoal for gesture warm ups before taking on the challenge of drawing David in a long pose.

And the final project was a long drawing using the subtractive method.  The pose provided a solid challenge  -- heavy foreshortening, drawing the face, hands and feet, and capturing dimensions with shadows and highlights --and a way to practice what we'd been studying the last 5 weeks.  

Stepping back from my drawing, I felt I should add in a lute and a lion to this composition, to create a male version of Henri Rousseau's "The Sleeping Gypsy."  

It was lovely to be swept away for an hour to just focus on drawing David and discovering where that drawing process led me. 

Collaborative Neon Gestures with Model Kathryn

After nearly a year of teaching figure drawing via Zoom, I keep trying to find new ways to inspire and instruct.  This week, inspiration came from Carnegie Mellon University Drawing Professor, Narelle Sissons, whose class I observed as David modeled.  Narelle asked her students to capture the shapes within David's form, and invited each to outline them using the Zoom Annotate function.

I loved the neon result, and decided to put this technique to use in our Osher class.  My students took to this approach like ducks to water!

 After the first few, I tried having Kathryn pose with herself.  She would take the first pose to one side, the students would sketch colorfully, then I would ask Kathryn to move to the second pose.

 By looking at her computer monitor, she could line up her second pose to complement her first.  The students sketched in shapes and found contours, and we collaboratively completed the composition.

After our virtual gesture drawing, we drew a quick gesture drawing in the same style on paper to warm our sketching hands up.

We moved on to the long pose, using a piece of drawing paper with vine charcoal rubbed in to create a toned paper (see video link below for instructions).  

We lifted out the highlights with a kneaded eraser, sketched in shadows with vine charcoal, and finalized our work with compressed charcoal and charcoal pencils.

The lovely bit about using this method is that if you ever want to change anything, the vine charcoal is easy to rub out --or to add back in, if you want to darken an area you erased out.

My finished drawing:

Here's the video describing how to prepare a piece of drawing paper for the subtractive method of drawing:

I recommend you give it a try!

Figure Drawing Upside-Down Gestures and the Face

 

In Friday's Osher class, our model, David, was also our technical support.  He figured out how to flip the camera's image of himself upside down so that we could have upside-down gestures.  

When drawing familiar things like the human form, a part of our brain thinks it "knows" how the final image should look, and tries to "help," leading to a struggle between what we see and what we think.  When we turn the familiar on its head, we free ourselves up to see & draw what's really there.  

Below are gestures that were drawn from an inverted image. I notice that I was more likely to capture the line of action rather than try to divide the body into my usual segments.  Sometimes things got out of proportion, but it all felt fresh and exciting.  And,turning them over at the end felt like receiving a gift -- a delightful surprise!

After gestures, we talked about the proportions of the head and face, and finished up with a long pose focusing on the portrait (first image).

Valentines Update!

Every year, when the snow piles up outside, and the world is monochromatic, I am drawn to brightly colored paint and creating Valentines.  It's part self-care, and part caring for others.  

This year, I combined a masking fluid "pen" and bold Schmincke watercolors.  

• Step 1: Draw a simple design on watercolor paper with a masking fluid pen -- my masking fluid was unpredictable, so I let blobs & thick lines happen.  Sometimes I waited for the masking fluid to dry and then removed big puddles in the wrong places, other times, I incorporated them into the design.  
• Step 2: Let the masking fluid dry.  This takes 20-30 minutes, depending on how thickly you lay it down.
• Step 3: Paint!  The masking fluid allows you to place bold colors right next to each other without any unwanted mixing.
• Step 4: Let paint dry & rub off the masking fluid -- with a gum eraser or your finger. Add any extra touches you like with colored pencils, etc.
• Step 5: Glue artwork to a blank card to create your Valentine. 
• Step 6: Write your message; sign your card; & drop it in the mail.  You just made someone's day!

The beauty of using small pieces of watercolor paper is that you can set up a stack of them, and experiment without the pressure of making "perfect" art.  

I also found a Valentine rose card tutorial video from Ellen Crimini-Trent on her YouTube channel.  You will be surprised at how easy and relaxing this project is!

I hope you'll take the opportunity to play with your art supplies and create Valentines cards to share with the important people in your life!

Color Wheel Magic!

I'm seeking vibrant, eye-catching color combinations, and more harmonious colors.  In short, I want to learn how to use color magic in my art.

I considered buying a color wheel.  Plenty of inexpensive color wheels are available, and the ones I like best provide an overlay to point out complementary colors, split complements, triads and tetrads. Each of these combinations creates a different effect. And the beauty of using color wheel magic is that once you decide on what type of combination you want to use, you can easily pick the colors you will use instead of scratching your head at each step.

I found a tutorial online that leads you through the process of creating your own color wheel, and decided to go for the color-mixing adventure! https://onlineartlessons.com/tutorial/split-primary-color-wheel/

I downloaded the template, traced it onto illustration board, and got to work mixing paints. And mixing paints.  And mixing, mixing, mixing ...

But as I mixed paints, I started to see relationships.  To dull a bright color down or create a shadow, the tutorial instructed me to mix the opposite color on the wheel, the complement. I also noticed a lot of flesh tones appearing as the color wheel filled out.

I created all of these colors with only 6 primary colors -- a warm and a cool each of blue, red and yellow - plus white. I used my Schmincke Horadam Aquarelle Watercolors.

• Cool Yellow = Lemon Yellow (215)
• Warm Yellow = Cadmium Yellow Light (224)
• Cool Red = Permanent Carmine (353)
• Warm Red = Cadmium Red Light (349)
• Cool Blue = Prussian Blue (492)
• Warm Blue = Ultramarine Finest (494)

I created an overlay out of a plastic page protector, marking the relationships that fascinated me -- complementary colors, split complementary colors, triads and tetrads. I can turn the overlay wheel to find the relationships between some of my favorite colors. 

Complementary colors (bold, solid line) -- or those across the color wheel from each other, like blue & orange  -- contrast brightly and make an artwork "pop."

Analogous colors -- those next to each other, like purple, blue and green -- create a more relaxing, harmonious effect.

Triads (solid line triangle) -- three colors equally spaced apart on the wheel, like red, blue and yellow to create a vibrant effect. It's important to let one of the colors dominate the image or the composition can appear "busy."

Split Complementary Colors (dotted lines) -- are a base color and the two colors on either side of its complement. For instance, blue-green as a base color, and orange and rose pink as split complements.

Tetrads (dashed lines) -- Four colors that are equally distant on the color wheel, also called double complements, that create rich compositions. It's important to allow one color to lead as in triads.

The trio of colors -- purple, green and my orangish flesh tone -- form a split complement.

The journal page on the left demonstrates the vibrant triad of red, blue and yellow. 

I look at the world and see colors and their magical relationships now. Inspired by my color wheel studies, I understand why blooming daffodils feel harmonious (the yellow blooms and green leaves are next to each other on the color wheel).  I understand why favorite color combinations like yellow, green, magenta & purple look so bright and appealing to me -- they're a tetrad.  I've started carrying my color wheel around with me like a slide rule.

I recommend creating your own color wheel. You'll see color in a whole new way!