Art with Cynthia

We  are off to a good start! Some homework for you: Tami:  Your goal is to finish some of your paintings, and you chose your river painting. Practice under-painting and over-painting for your river. - try different interesting underpainting colors, and different kinds of brush strokes for over painting. There are lots of opinions about under painting. I like to have flashes of the underpainting showing through. I often use a complementary color, or a main color from another part of the composition. In my Mt. Pisgah painting (below) I was inspired by the sky in van Gogh's "Women Digging Potatoes" for the red underpainting as well as the brush work in the sky: Becky:   1. You talked about painting the ocean. Bring a photo of a landscape that means something to you, and be prepared to riff on it in an abstract way. By riffing, I mean it doesn't have to look like a beach or a landscape, but somehow evoke beachiness. Examples: 2. B uy some new tubes of blue, and paint splo...

Our  assignments last week led us on a rich dialogue! We looked at paintings that inspired you in the New Year.  I was impressed with your choices, and inspired in turn.  After our discussion I set some homework for you: Tami:  1. Work on brush handling. Check out the step by step painting web site for some exercises to try. (She also has a buying guide if you ant to get any new brushes.) 2. Your goal is to finish some of your paintings, so please choose the one you want to work on and be prepared to work on it! Becky:   1. Explore Red.  One of your choices for inspiration was this one, below. Your assignment is to buy some new tubes of red and paint splotches of many different mixtures of red, taking some notes,  and make a list or a chart of colors you like best so you can begin to incorporate them into your work. 2. Bring a photo of a landscape that means something to you, and be prepared to riff on it in an abstract way. Abstract Landsca...

I'm  starting out the New Year (2021) with some thought about themes. I think we are all tending towards abstraction, so I want to give a little introduction today into the history of  abstraction, as it applies to landscape.  I found this great article at  Ideelart.com , and I'll quote a bit here, then hope you go check out the entire article:   What Landscape Art Gave Abstraction In the Mid-1800s, landscape artists began utilizing a style of painting called “plein-air,” or open-air painting. Plein-air brought painters away from their studios to paint outside. This instantly made landscape painting the most sensual way a painter could work. Compare the alternatives of historic or religious paintings, portraits, slices-of-life, still lives or animal scenes. Plein-air painting offered a world of sensual delights, such as the flickering of light off water, the changing colors of the sky, the miraculous multitude of  colors  lines and forms in nature. Pl...

-Need ruler, pencil, triangle 1. Review homework a. You experimented with an anonymous expressive face-- trying only to capture the expressive nature of a face, in its simplest form. We used Matisse's process, and end up with as few lines as possible, which you then transferred to a clean page and finished with any medium you wished (ink, pencil, charcoal, etc.) 2. Cubes and 2-point perspective: 2-point perspective is one way of drawing objects in 3D. The cube drawn with two vanishing points looks as if the sides are slowly fading away into the distance. 1) First mark a horizon line 3/4's up on the paper, with vanishing points on each side (VP). Then draw one edge of the cube beneath and perpendicular to the horizon line, and centered between the vanishing points. 2) Draw faint lines from each end of the first edge of the cube to the vanishing points. Draw two more edges of the cube so that two sides of the cube can be clearly seen. 3) To add the top of the cube, draw two more...

Drawing #6 -Need good quality largish photo of a face facing front- preferably black and white 1.     10 min. Review homework a.     Collage-  c.     New portrait-  Choose a photo of a face you like. 2.     Face proportions- 15 min. a.  Proportion is how the parts of the face relate to each other. It’s the correct size and placement of the eyes, mouth and nose. If you mess up the shape of the head and the location of the features, you will not capture a likeness. 1)     As a rule, the face has a more or less oval shape. Draw an oval. 2)     Start with guide lines: ]   Eye line: Most eyes are at about the center of the face. Measure and draw an eye-line. ]   Nose line: Make a light mark higher than halfway between the eyeline and chin line. ]   Mouth: Measure the distance between the nose and eye lines and place the mouth line the same distance above the chin. 3)  ...

Drawing 2 #5 -Need good quality largish photo of a tree- preferably black and white 1.     Review homework a.     Animal drawing. b.     Tree: Your homework was to c.     find or take a tree photo (close enough to see the texture of the tree),  d.     draw thumbnails to plan a simple composition focusing on the tree trunk, but have interest in the positive and negative spaces,  e.     start a first draft, and experiment with texture. 2.    Tree drawing: a.     To believably draw a tree, you need to: 1)     First outline the shape of the trunk and branches. 2)     Next look at the value patterns (lightness and darkness) underneath the texture. You can see them better if you squint your eyes and blur the details. Outline the different value areas. 3)     Bark texture is indicated by using marks that imitate bark shape and...

1.    Review & Homework:  Last week  we discussed gesture drawing and experimented with charcoal... Gesture is just one useful tool for starting a drawing, especially one with lots of variation of form, as in a human body or an animal. You can also use contour outlines, and negative space drawings, or any combination. b.     Animal drawing:  Your homework was to do thumbnails and start a first draft for this drawing, and experiment with texture- how far did you get? 1)     Did you do thumbnails to decide on the composition? 2)     Did you try a gesture? How did it work for you? 2.     Negative space drawing: a.     Drawings have 2 kinds of space, the positive (the object), and the negative (the background).  One basic skill of drawing is to see the negative spaces. b.     When we draw or paint, we tend to concentrate on the subject and ignore the negative space aro...