Hunter 24: Story, Color and Edges

I’m doing this blog post different than the previous ones.

Every painting I do I take notes before each session. Well, almost before each session, sometimes I forget. These notes not only organize my thoughts before I begin painting but they also serve as a reminder of what I was thinking about when I was painting. I’m going to put all those notes here with little adjustment.

The original image is the first one in the gallery below. The others are filter adjustments I do in photoshop to see how it simplifies the image. I do this sometimes to get different and interesting ideas on how to simplify the subject. I don’t paint from these images, they just give me ideas on how much little information I can get away with.

Dec 19
I did a recording of my whole process for arriving at these images.
I love how this person seems vulnerable, cowering, huddled, cornered, afraid, cold.
I want to use all these words to tell a story so the first thing I did was crop the image so the figure was pushed down to the bottom left of the composition. A meek position for anyone, huddled into a corner.
With the big space above them.
I’ll probably make that space above very dark and oppressive. I want the space to take on the role of the antagonizing thing that is making this person cower in a corner.
I also like the curve from the bottom right corner, the foot, curving left and upward through the head. Mirrored in both legs.
The focal point will be the head and I want to push that angle from the head down through the leg to the bottom right corner.
The light and the left foot can be simplified to remove its influence on the whole of the picture.

Dec 20

I realized that for the Youtube videos I make for these paintings I’m talking about many ideas all in the same video without giving the time and focus each idea needs. I’m doing too much in each video.

Now I’m going to focus on delivering just one big idea per video and painting session. 

This way I can respect people’s time and I practice the same focus for video making as I do on my art.

The big idea for today.

The next step after drawing.

• Cover the white and establish the values and get hues close
  • Value: Most important
  • Hues: Close is good enough
  • Saturation: keep it low
  • NO DETAIL, yet
• Why
  • Building a painting. Placement, composition and proportions are done with drawing first. This is the next major step.
  • Gives you a great idea of the whole painting quickly by establishing the composition’s foundation
  • An overall tonal balance
  • Creating a cohesive structure to build upon for richer color and definition later
  • Prevents major corrections
  • Makes corrections easier
  • Gives an understanding if the narrative is working
  • If done well you know if the painting is working and if you want to continue.

Here is the video on that.

Dec 21
For this session I decided to go over my method for matching color.
Color is only made up of 3 things.
Value, Hue and Saturation.
Value is a spectrum from light to dark.
Hue is the rainbow of names; red, orange, green.
Saturation is a spectrum from gray to intensity.

Only 3 elements but an infinite variation of all 3.

To match what we see I like to start with Hue.
This looks like a yellow leaning a bit towards orange.
So I need my yellow and a bit of red to make it go orange ish.

Next Value, on a scale of 0 to 10 this would be close to a 10, very light.
Because I work with yellow ochre I may need a bit of white to lighten it up.
Or, if I really have to I can get my cadmium yellow for a bit more punch.

Last Saturation, for this one I like to think of a color wheel that goes to gray or white in the center.

This shows how color on the outside of the ring is pure and of highest saturation.
Closer to the center as we add gray, white, black or its opposite it gets less saturated.
In my experience the majority of colors in nature have a lot less saturation than we think.

Next we mix our first go at the color with a brush on our palette and compare.
When comparing I run through the same process.
Is it the yellow orange we wanted?
Is the value close?
Is the saturation close?

And the answers normally go like this.
The color is close but it needs to go closer to red a bit. Add a tiny bit of red.
The value is close but it needs to be a bit lighter. Add a tiny bit of white or brighter yellow.
Careful with white because it will desaturate colors.
The saturation is close but it needs to be a bit less saturated, so maybe the white will work perfectly to brighten it up and desaturate it a bit.

The key is to run this through your head as much as you can.
Eventually, after you do this for 10-20 paintings it will go very quickly.
It will become as natural as smooshing paint around.

Here is the video on that.

Dec 23
Edges
Can take your painting from basic to extraordinary with edges.
They are on a spectrum just like most of the elements of color.
Hard to lost
How to create hard edges.
How to create lost edges.
Value plays a big role in edges.
Harder and softer than you think because of value.
Saturation as well.
Brush manipulation.

You can see the last two videos for this painting here and here.