June 30--Paint the Night Sky

Nighttime paintings can be a lot of fun but rather challenging, too. At this class we're going to explore painting the landscape at night, with a closer look at the mystery and beauty of the night sky. 

First of all, I want you to go outside and LOOK at what you can see. Get away from bright lights as much as you can and notice how dark or light the sky is, what value difference there is in the hills or trees or plants around you. Look at your feet, note the shadow of your car or house. Analyze the value structure... Not everything at night is black! Take some photos, if you're able, and just see what you get. Digital cameras are fairly remarkable this way. 

I find it hard to take a good night photo showing everything I want, although I occasionally get the "lucky shot" that works out. It's more satisfying to me to seek out other interesting pictures and combine several different ones to make a more exciting painting. look around and see if you can find photos to use, perhaps as many as three, and think creatively about how you'll put different parts to use. You might grab the hills or city lights from one, the sky from another, and the closer trees or foreground information from a third.

Do you know that there are websites containing photos you can use for paintings? Naturally, if you copy one of these photographs faithfully you won't be able to enter it in the big shows, so be cautious how you use them, but for our purposes it's fun to find some different resources to use, and combine them into one different place altogether. Here are some from Morgue File that I might use this week in my demonstration:

(And remember, you might use some of your new found Photoshop skills to make a combination you like!)

We'll do a quick critique of work in progress, so feel free to bring your painting along for us to view and discuss briefly.

Our class is at the Paradise Methodist Church on the west side of Albuquerque, 11:30-2:30. Come at 11:00 to get set up, and feel free to bring a sack lunch. I'll have iced tea for us. Please RSVP (<--clickable link) if you haven't reserved your space already, but don't hesitate to come on along at the last minute! The charge is only $25 at the door.

Any medium is welcome (as long as there are no strong smelling solvents), but I'll be doing a demo with my PanPastels for the class.

See you on Thursday!

 Deborah

Paint the Summer Sky and Clouds class results

Who doesn't love to paint a billowing summer cloud looming over the hills? Well, I love it, as you can see from the example above. As promised, this is a PanPastel on Pastelmat, which is turning out to be the frontrunner for me in terms of painting materials, especially for these sky paintings.

I'd like to link you to two chapters in my free online book, called Landscape Painting in Pastels. First, take a look at the sky. There are some generalizations to keep in mind, among them:

1. The sky is lightest at the horizon.
2. The sky is darkest at the zenith.
3. Even a slight gradation suggests this arch.
4. Use more than one color layer.
5. Winter skies tend to be purple-blue.
6. Summer skies tend to be green-blue.
7. The sky is brighter in the sun’s quadrant.
8. The sky slightly darkens opposite the sun.

And next let's examine the clouds. Likewise, some 'rules' you might want to take into consideration:

1. Clouds are whitest directly overhead.
2. Clouds are dull and yellow-pink at the horizon.
3. No cloud is pure white.
4. Do not begin clouds with white.
5. Try the green-peach-lavender triad for grays.
6. Clouds have tops, bottoms and sides.
7. Clouds cast shadows on other clouds.
8. Clouds glow from the center outwards.

I suggest finding a photograph that is inspiring but not so complex that you're baffled about how to paint it. Do some cropping, if so, and find what expresses the scene without overwhelming you, or take it into a photo program and use a filter such as Smart Blur in Photoshop, to simplify it to shapes and values/colors. Print that out and use it as your resource, at least to begin with.

If you look down at the last post you'll see a photo of a painting demo I did at IAPS using the same photograph for inspiration. Don't limit yourself, thinking you've already painted that one--"paint it again, Sam!"

Keep going, gang!
Deborah

June 9--Paint the Summer Sky and Clouds

PanPastel demonstration painting on the easel at IAPS

Here in New Mexico our summertime skies are spectacular, with layers of beautiful clouds, blossoming thunderstorms and beautiful virga falling over the spectacular mountains and plains. I just returned from doing demonstrations using PanPastels at the 2011 International Association of Pastel Societies convention, where I painted our gorgeous skies, so I'm all warmed up for this class. 

On Thursday we'll discuss how to paint various kinds of clouds, looking at the structure, color, contrasts and 'rules' of clouds in the daytime summer sky. Any medium is welcome, as usual, but I'll be doing a demo with my PanPastels for the class.

We'll do a quick critique of work in progress, so feel free to bring one along for us to view and discuss briefly.

Our class is at the Paradise Methodist Church on the west side of Albuquerque, 11:30-2:30. Come at 11:00 to get set up, and feel free to bring a sack lunch. I'll have iced tea for us. Please RSVP (<--clickable link) if you haven't reserved your space already, but don't hesitate to come on along at the last minute!

See you on Thursday!

Deborah