What is a Blog?

Tuesdays Painting in the Presidio Cemetery

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 22:43:17 -0700

Hi Sue,

I decided to visit this most beautiful setting and paint the scene just after Memorial Day.

Thanks, Robin Mize

Bits and Pieces: Looking Better Inside – Compensating for Interior Lighting

Wed, 26 May 2010 16:34:05 -0700

by Ed Bertolet

This piece will discuss the effects of artificial light and what you can do to make your painting look better when you bring it home!

“Inside” Information

We need to consider how our paintings will look once we have brought them inside where they are usually viewed under a dim (compared to being outdoors) and yellowish artificial light. This is a problen particularly for plein air painters. When we paint outside, the intense natural light (even when painting in the shade of an umbrella) will influence the intensity and values of the color we mix. Many times I thought I had good, rich color only to have those colors appear dull and lifeless when viewed in my living room.

This phenomenon is mostly a concern for the oil painter as the pastel artists picks up a piece of strong color to start, while the oil painter must rely on mixng their color under the influence of a brilliant outdoor light.

A Yellowing Effect
First let’s consider artificial or incandescent light in general. The inherent color of artificial light tends to be a pretty strong yellow. The effect this has on paintings is to “whiten” the yellows and “gray down” the blues and violets. The great landscape painter John F. Carlson addressed this problem by using Prussian Blue as it tends to retain its “blueness” when viewed in artificial light. But Prussian Blue is a difficult color to work with and you will need practice to control it.

I suggest you paint some color swatches outside using your favorite palette and see what happens to those colors when viewed inside. Make some notes as to which colors are most affected and how you may need to adjust them to make them appear stronger when seen inside.

A Reduced Value Range
Second, is the effect of a reduced dynamic range of values. This will darken your lights and compress your shadows. To compensate, you will have to paint your lights brighter than what seems natural when you are outside. Brighter does not necessarily mean adding more white to bring the value up. Try some “high chroma” colors that are now available with modern dyes. If you do need to add white, try adding a pale cream instead of white. White by itself tends to cool a mixture and make it pastey. Using a cream, or buff to mix your color will lighten a color without deadening the color as much as adding white alone would do.

SOLUTIONS
There are three ways we can combat the effects of artificial light on color when a painting is viewed indoors.

Manipulating color.
Use colors with a higher chromatic content, and try using prussian blue.

Adjusting value.
Increase contrasts by making the lights brighter in all value ranges (while keeping the integrity of those value areas intact). That is – try to keep variations in your shadow areas more pronounced (without leaving the assigned value range) so they don’t get lost when the painting comes inside.

Using complements.
Although dimmed inside, placing complements together will increase their apparent intensity. Try to make use of simulteanous contrast where you can by placing an intense complement next to your yellows (a violet made with Prussian blue) or a rich orange next to your blues.

In Summary:

Make your lights higher in value and more intense than they may appear at the time. Consider increasing overall contrasts as the dynamic value range is reduced once you are inside.

Intensify your blues and violets to compensate for the yellow cast of interior lighting. (Consider experimenting with Prussian Blue.)

Depend more on juxtapositioning strong complements to perceptually intensify the yellows and blues.

Finally… view your painting outdoors through a sheet of plastic or piece of cellophane that is tinted a light yellow to approximate the way the painting will be seen when viewed in the yellowed artificial light indoors.

NorCal Emmy Nomination - Art News

Sat, 15 May 2010 21:15:41 -0700

Dearest Friends,
I am so excited to share with you the hot news in the Fono Art Fono World.
Last year I was a speaker on the topic of "art and inspiration" on a local San Francisco after noon talk show View From The Bay 3 times.
They filmed one segment at my art studio, and that segment, the producer and editor, were nominated for a Northern California Emmy Award.
Isn't that a hoot?

I actually get to say "it is an honor just to be nominated".
Here is the link, in case you would like to see it.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=view_from_the_bay/arts_entertainment&id=6658211

Will keep you posted with the results, and on June 10th I will be on the program again speaking about other art ideas and "the painted artist chair."

With much love, Andrea

http://www.fonoart.com
joyful art & art lessons
3520 Haven Ave. Studio D
Redwood City, CA 94063
650.868.4171

"My true religion is kindness." The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet

Oakland Museum of CA Opening

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:32:44 -0700

Hi Sue,
I'm excited — The Oakland Museum of California is opening again after it's big renovation (the past 3 years)! Opening Weekend Celebration, May 1st and 2nd.

http://museumca.org/calendar/opening-weekend-celebration

They have a great permanent collection, and always interesting exhibits, Dagroup members should definitely check out the permanent collection of landscape painting...

EARLY LANDSCAPE PAINTING
Once the intense excitement of the Gold Rush calmed, Californians turned their gaze to the natural beauty of the environment. East Coast and European painters like Albert Bierstadt and William Keith, and California’s first African-American artist, Grafton Tyler Brown, conveyed a sense of the sublime in the newly discovered wonders of Yosemite. William Coulter, Marius Dahlgren and others captured coastal light and weather. Later, California-born artists like Lucia Mathews, Joseph Raphael, and Guy Rose fostered a calmer, more intimate vision of the California landscape. The Museum holds an unparalleled collection of California landscape painting, dating from the early 19th century.

Gregory

Bits and Pieces - Sky Holes

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:20:55 -0700

by Ed Bertolet

The term sky holes, if you’ve never heard of it, is an artists’ term describing the light (patches of sky) that you paint to indicate the spaces and gaps (holes) created by the trunks and clumps of the foliage of trees and bushes. Our minds tell us that since the we have mixed a nice color for the sky and that color peeks through the holes, all we need to do is dab a little of that color here and there to create the effect. Not so.

To fully understand sky holes we need to step back and consider the larger issue that determines how we should paint them. That issue is how we depict the overall feeling of light and volume in a painting. If we paint a flat light color (like the sky) next to a flat dark color (like a tree) it will look as if the two things were pasted down next to each other and lack any feeling of depth, volume or light. Why is that? Because light is a fluid thing that diffracts around objects and influences the area where the light source meets the dark object. To display the effects of light and volume we need to show that the lighted space next to the dark object tends to become slightly darker in value and the portion of the dark object against the light becomes lighter in value.

Too many artists will try to soften the edges where the two values meet to mimic this diffraction. That is a common misstep (of which I am still often guilty) as it helps but is not a very good solution. An accomplished painter will ever so slightly darken the sky next to the tree and ever so slightly lighten the tree next to the sky. If you do this a hard edge can still be retained and yet very effectively portray a feeling of space, volume and light.

Now let’s go back to the problem of painting sky holes in trees. As light is filtered through the tree it loses some of its brilliance. The smaller the sky hole, the more light is lost. Therefore no sky hole should be painted as bright as the sky and should be darker the smaller the sky hole. Look closely at the shape, size and ditribution of the sky holes you see as they are different for each kind of tree. A eucalyptus will present different shaped and numbers of sky holes than an oak or a stand of elms.

NOTE
The humidity, temperature and atmosphere will determine how apparent you paint these adjustments. The more humidity or dense the atmosphere, the more pronounced the effects.

To summarize:

• Paint your sky holes slightly darker than the sky.
• The smaller the sky hole the darker it should be.
• Carefully observe the shapes of the sky hole for the tree you’re painting.
• Lighten the color of the tree next to the sky.
• The darker the sky color next to the tree, the less the tree is lightened.

by Ed Bertolet
©2010

The Fun Theory

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:16:07 -0700

Great videos to watch ... fun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEKAwCoCKw&feature=watch_response_rev

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSiHjMU-MUo&feature=watch_response

Bits and Pieces – Clean Color

Fri, 2 Apr 2010 19:48:36 -0700

by Ed Bertolet

Do the colors in your paintings tend to look dull?

This month's blog on Clean Color will show you an easy way to a way to brighten them up! If you've never heard of the term "Split Primaries", or if you have, but are not sure what it means read on....

Obtaining Clean Color

The term clean color is often confused with other color properties – high chroma (intensity), lightness (high in value) and purity (the absence of other hues, especially complements). Of all these, clean color is most related to color purity.

Clean color is achieved by using the minimum number of colors to create your desired mixture and consciously being careful to eliminate any unwanted complements.

Although you may use a limited palette, a good way to explore clean color is to use what is known as a “split-primary” palette. That is a palette where the primary colors are split into warm and cool versions. Below is one example of a split palette, but you may use any combination of primary colors that have a warm and cool variation.

Warm Blue – Ultramarine Blue (a reddish bias)
Warm Red – Cadmium Red Light (a yellowish bias)
Warm Yellow – Indian Yellow (a reddish bias)

Cool Blue – Manganese Blue (a yellowish bias)
Cool Red – Alizarin Crimson (a bluish bias)
Cool Yellow – Lemon Yellow (a bluish bias)

Titanium White
Chromatic Black*

(Note that a yellow bias in a red warms it while a yellow bias in a blue cools it! So is a neutral yellow a warm or cool color? Depends on what colors it is placed next to. Warm and cool attributes of any particular color are dependent on the colors surrounding it.)

Here is how a split palette works. Let’s say we want to mix a rich violet color. We all know we get a violet when we mix red and blue. If we want a clean color we need to eliminate any yellow bias as that complement would gray the violet mixture. So we select a blue that leans to the red (Ultramarine) and a red that leans to the blue (Alizarin). If we chose Manganese (yellow bias) and Cadmium Red Light (yellow bias) to mix a violet, both would contain yellow traces that would deaden the richness of the violet. This is a simple experiment you can try to see the marked difference in the richness of the violets produced by these two different combinations.

To reiterate; let’s say we want a rich orange. We mix a red and a yellow. So we would want a red with a yellow bias (Cad Red Light) and a yellow with a red bias (Indian Yellow) to achieve the richest orange. If we mixed a Lemon yellow (blue bias) with an Alizarin (blue bias) we would get a much duller orange because of the added complementary blue tints.

Eliminating unnecessary complements is the starting point for clean colors. We can neutralize those rich mixtures later if we need to, but we’ll have better control and “cleaner” color by starting with the richest color we can make as the beginning point.

NOTE
* Gamblin’s Chromatic Black is a great choice to darken a color because it will do so without changing the hue. That’s because it is made with pure transparent and perfect complements so it will not change the hue, only darken it.

Here is another split primary palette just to show you can use a variety of colors

Cobalt Blue and Cerulean Blue
Vermillion and Rose Madder
Windsor Yellow and Cadmium Yellow

Little things that make a Big difference

by Ed Bertolet
©2010

Seraphine - A Movie Review

Fri, 2 Apr 2010 19:35:59 -0700

Watched the movie last night, "Seraphine" about the artist Seraphine de Senlis. I knew nothing about her. 1864 - 1942. Beautifully filmed and acted. Available on Netflix. French with subtitles. Absolutely riveting and well worth the 2 hours!

Diana

SÉRAPHINE is the story of Séraphine Louis aka Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), a simple and profoundly devout housekeeper who in 1905 at age 41, self-taught and with the instigation of her guardian angel began painting brilliantly colorful canvases. In 1912 Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), a German art critic and collector - he was one of the first collectors of Picasso and champion of naïve primitive painter Le Douanier Rousseau - discovered her paintings while she worked for him as a maid in his house in Senlis outside Paris. A moving and unexpected relationship develops between the avant-garde art dealer and the visionary cleaning lady leading to Séraphine’s work being grouped with other naïve painters – the so-called “Sacred Heart Painters” - with acclaimed shows in France, elsewhere in Europe and eventually at New York’s MOMA . Martin Provost’s poignant portrait of this now largely forgotten painter is a testament to the mysteries of creativity and the resilience of one woman’s spirit.

“Exceptional…refuses to capitulate to the ordinary and the expected…the long French tradition of thoughtful, intelligent films of quality for adults is alive and well here, and that is reason to rejoice.”

-Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

“Sublime… one of the most evocative films about an artist I’ve ever seen.”

-David Edelstein, New York Magazine

“A superior film…almost biblical in its simplicity and passion”

-Stanley Kauffman, New Republic

“If you turn off all that electronic crap in your pockets and sit still for it, "Séraphine" will be one of the year's most memorable moviegoing experiences.”

-Andrew O’Heher, Slate

“The best movie made about a painter since Maurice Pialat’s exquisite Van Gogh in 1991 — and one of the only ones that truly grasps how close artistic genius dwells to the realm of madness”

-Scott Foundas, Los Angeles Weekly

“Yolande Moreau, an actress for whom there is no American equivalent… invests the tragedy and humor of the human condition with a spiritual luminosity.”

-Stephen Holden, The New York Times

Awards:
_____________

2009 Cesar Awards for Best Picture, Actress (Yolande Moreau), Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, Music

2009 Lumiere Awards for Best Actress (Yolande Moreau)

Bits and Pieces – Getting a Painting to “Read”

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:57:34 -0800

Little things that make a Big difference

by Ed Bertolet
©2010

You’ve often heard someone say this about a painting – “It doesn’t read.” What on earth are they talking about? I don’t think they mean the painting is illiterate! So what the do they mean? This statement usually refers to a situation where the value groups a painter has intended have been confused with values that are out of a particular group’s range. This is apt to happen when the painter is confused too! So let’s end the confusion and discuss the two areas that will affect how well a painting reads.

Part 1 Establish Distinct Value Groups

Every painting needs distinct value groups. How many depends on the artist’s style, intent and composition. You need at least two and can go up to five distinct value groups, but with five you will have difficulty in holding them together unless you are a true master at controlling values. I suggest you try for two value groups at first and expand in incremental steps to more value groups in progressive paintings. A strong, well-defined value pattern is the first step to assure your painting “reads” well.

DISTINCT VALUE GROUPINGS
Two-value Group – Light and Dark
Three-value Group – Light, Medium and Dark
Four-value Group – Light, Medium Light, Medium Dark and Dark
Five-value Group – Highlights, Quartertones, Halftones, Three-quartertones, Darks

Being deceived. The eye and mind are continually tricking you when you try to judge values on location. The mind will accentuate contrasts and tends to ignore what isn’t in the immediate focal area. So, if you try to paint what you “think you see” you’re going to be in trouble. You will probably have to adjust the values you see either up or down to fit them into an identifiable value group in order to maintain the value relationships you have established for your composition.

Two prime examples of where values are often misjudged occur with cloud shadows and distant mountains. Because your mind and perceptual processes judge contrasts “locally” (within the narrow focal area), the mind will exaggerate the contrast you observe. As a consequence, many painters make these areas much darker than they should be relative to the other objects in the painting. This failing is also related to the fact that you can paint fewer values than you can perceive, so you need to simplify your painting’s values.

Part 2 Establish a Dominant Value Group

Once you’ve decided on how many distinct value groups to use, you have to establish one of them as being the dominant value group! If you’re using a two-value group, one needs to be larger and one smaller in size. If they are both the same size the viewer doesn’t know which one to focus on since they will retain equal importance. Hence, the viewer will be “confused” and the painting won’t read.

How much larger or smaller one value group or the other is will depend on your composition. However, the golden mean is always a good place to start in establishing a relationship between value groups as the eye find this ratio (1:1.618) a pleasing one.

If you are using a three-value group it is a good idea to “bundle” any two of them in a smaller area and play them against the remaining dominant value group. For example, you could use a light and dark against a larger medium area or use a medium and dark against a larger light area.

What you need to do to make your paintings “read”.

Make some preliminary sketches. Thumbnail sketches allow you to work on creating defined value groups that are interesting shapes. Establishing this pattern of values will be the primary force in your composition. Be sure to establish strong, identifiable value groups! 
Decide which will be the dominant value group. When working out your composition, be sure to make one value group clearly the dominant one. 
Block in your value groups. Using a thin mixture of paint (in any colors that fit your style) block in the value groups (being sensitive to the edges that define an object’s nature). Be clear in the separation of your value groups. It is more important to get the relative values correct than the right color at this time! 
Maintain this separation. When painting these value groups, and adjusting color, make sure the darkest value in a lighter value group is significantly lighter that the light value in a darker value group. Otherwise the eye will “connect” these values and destroy the shapes of the individual value groups you have so carefully created. It won’t READ!

FINAL NOTE
An important thing to remember when creating value groups is to create them based on the shapes made by similar values and not base them solely on an individual object’s shape or color. An object may have individual parts of it that fall into different value groups. This creates what are known as passages and give interest and complexity to your work. Looking at a scene through a piece of red cellophane or plastic will help you consolidate the values into their respective groups by removing the distraction of local color variations.

The following examples in paintings by Brian Blood and T. Allen Lawson show a three value pattern. Brian’s tree is the dominate value. Note how the light and medium areas are not contiguous as a sliver of the light area runs through the medium area. In T. Allen Lawson’s painting the light area is the dominant one and the medium and dark shapes of the outcrop are played against this light area of sky and snow.

CLICK “Read more” below to see examples.

Bits and Pieces – BELIEVABLE SHADOWS

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:49:11 -0800

Little things that make a Big difference

by Ed Bertolet
©2009

Shadows are often an important element in our landscape. And because they can have such a prominent place and an important overall effect, they should be handled so they become exciting, transparent, three-dimensional and believable.

So, how do we that? Let’s examine a tree shadow step by step, taking a progression of steps that reveal the true nature of shadows. Look carefully at your next opportunity and see if the following isn’t true.

Example: A tree shadow cast upon the ground.

Make your shadow a lighter value than the tree trunk. How much lighter will depend on the intensity of the light causing the shadow. The reason for this is that more light from the sky is falling on the ground than on the tree trunk, so it must be receiving more light and thus will be lighter in value.

Make your shadow a different color instead of just adding black to the ground color. Because of the reflected lights (the sky and surrounding objects) in the shadow and the inherent color of the light casting the shadow (which adds its color to the ground area in sunlight), the area inside the shadow will actually be a different color, not just a darker version of the surrounding area.

Make the shadow a warmer color near the trunk and a cooler color (use your sky color as a cue) as it moves away from the trunk. The shadow next to the trunk will be receiving less bounced light from the sky (usually blue) so will appear warmer. Also, even though it is dark, some color from the trunk of the tree will affect the shadow color directly next to it.

Make the shadow edges softer as they move away from the trunk. Light tends to bend around objects and the further away the shadow is cast, the more the light has “flared” creating a less distinct edge.

Shadows further back in space will appear lighter and more blue than the foreground shadows. Because a “curtain of air” hangs between the foreground and distant shadows it obscures some of the light (making them lighter) and absorbs the warmer colors (making them appear more blue in color).

FINAL NOTE
These distinctions, while visible, are very subtle. None-the-less they are vital to creating a sense of space. You will be surprised how making these adjustments to your shadows will enliven them and by so doing capture an enhanced feeling of light in your painting!