Well, upon seeing what I had done and posted to this blog, my mentor, Mark Keathley, responded with encouragement and a couple of recommendations. The first was to apply thicker paint in the lighter areas of the starts where I am trying to portray light. While I already understood this principle I had difficulty carrying it out. He provided brief guidance as to how best accomplish that. He described the application of paint in those areas to putting on icing with the brush held more parallel to the canvas. He also suggested that I mix about twenty piles of colors to use, including pastel shades, greens, blues and purples that don't come in the tube colors.
For the benefit of those who may want to know, the principle of painting darks thinly and lights with thicker paint when painting in oils is foundational as is painting thin to thick and dark to light. The reasoning is pretty easy to grasp and demonstrate. You cannot see the color of dark hues if applied thickly. They need some light shinning through them to transmit their hue. By the same token, light colors if not applied thickly will allow darker color underneath to show through. Also the brightest brights are most often highlights reflecting off some surface and should stand out or sort of sparkle, whereas darker shadow areas should lay back. This is also controlled by color temperature: cool colors like blues and greens tend to recede and warm colors like yellow and red tend to advance, visually.
Mark also suggested that I do another set of starts using the guidance he offered described above. Since I enjoyed doing the first set of starts he recommended and feel that I made some progress, I'm certainly going to take his further advice and do another set of starts. Therefore, I'm now making selections from my photo images that I would like to paint. Most of these I'll do even smaller in a 6"X8" panel as I have quite a few of those prepared with gesso and some with canvas applied to the panel. These starts are similar to learning to do scales before performing a recital, but a lot more fun.
The purpose of doing them even smaller is to avoid putting in too much detail in these starts, concentrating more on the design of the compositions. This is done by combining shapes and values to simplify and strenghten the compositions in this underpainting stage. Doing so will help me gain the ability to more simply and dynamically express what I want to communicate.
If the composition and design "works" in this small format it will also work when a larger painting is done, and the larger painting will not be as much about copying details as it will be about communicating the emotions I feel about the image I chose to paint.
Following Mark Keathley's counsel is somewhat like the story behind the movie "Julie and Julia" which was partly responsible for my returning to paint and doing this blog. In the movie, Julie blogs her journey through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." It was after seeing this movie with my younger daughter and wife that my daughter challenged me to do this blog and start painting again. I'm like the young "Julia" and Mark's counsel to me is guiding me like Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." I'm extremely grateful for his willingness to give me guidance. I have never been more excited about painting than I am now. At nearly 66, I'll take all the non-medical excitement I can get.
So, with another set of starts to come, the journey to become a better painter continues...
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