Yesterday Heather and I took a trip to New York City.

First we went to the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery on 57th Street to see and exhibition of Photorealist paintings.  Then we went to the Armory to see the Print exhibition. Next to Candle Cafe for lunch and then to the Met where we saw the Vermeer exhibition of the Milkmaid.

study

Rey demonstrated some painting techniques on this painting today in class, and I worked on it some more as well. Here are some general pointers he gave me and my interpretations of what he said mixed together:

Work on color mixing and brush strokes. Work from the lighter areas into the darker areas. Put the color down that you are looking for. Use a bigger palette area. look for cool warm areas and mix the paints and put them in. I need to work on seeing and interpreting the colors when looking at source material. If I put something in too dark pull it off with wet brush and paper towel. Look for reflected light. Shadow is darkest at transition area and then lighter beyond from reflected light. look for color in reflected areas. He said he read that Vermeer put down yellow in transition area and then painted over so there was luminosity there.

The thing that I remember is when he was talking to another student and he said not to worry about copying exactly what is in the source material, but to get to a point where you are having fun with it. I think that is the key – getting to a point where you are comfortable with everything – all the theory, technique, etcetera and then just getting to the point where you are having fun.

I continued with the study of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring the past few days.

vermeer watercolor study continuation

It is interesting how the cartoon-like look of the painting from a day or two ago has faded as I applied more detail. The main thing I’ve learned with this is that when you are painting a big area that is basically the same color (for example the shadow of the nose) it is ok to go in with a lot of small brush strokes [which I didn't do] and work toward the complete area, instead of trying to get the shape exactly right with just one or two large brush strokes. I am trying to work the various face areas slowly, taking time to clean the brush after applying paint and then doing many small faded washes.

I am going to continue with this study, then do a 1:1 watercolor of just the face before proceeding with a 1:1 full painting on hot press. This and the next will likely be the last cold press painting I’ll do for awhile.

study of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

This watercolor study is half size of the original. It is on 140 cold press. Once it is done I am going to a full scale study of the face on cold press. Then I plan on a full scale painting on hot press 140lb.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened in the last week was that I bought a sheet of hot press watercolor paper. I have been using 140 lb cold pressed for all my previous paintings. I was shocked to see how much more freedom the hot press gives me. Maybe it is my style, but it just seems like it is so much easier using the hot press. You don’t need as much water to get the paint on the paper, once on the paper you have more control and you can blend and fade easier. I think this will be a huge turn for me and my paintings.

This is a little study of part of a painting I want to do. This is a small part of the painting. It is looking in a window of a restaurant where some people are having lunch.

study

Below the people is a plaid curtain which is beyond my capabilities at this time. I did a few things with the wood that I really like. I think I was mixing Burnt Sienna with aliz. crimson and medium yellow and trying different glazes to try and create that deep mahogany color. A tricky thing with wood is all the carpentry things. The little extra pieces of wood and the folds and bevels and recesses etc.

A couple weeks ago I started reading a book called Vermeer Family Secrets. I kept seeing Vermeer mentioned by the photorealists in other books I was reading, so I decided to look into him. I knew very little about him at the time. The book I’m reading just came out this year and the author (Benjamin Binstock) is basically proposing a whole new theory that Vermeer’s daughter (Maria, the girl with the pearl earring) was his secret apprentice and painted 8 of the paintings currently credited to Vermeer. Since I have no previous knowledge of Vermeer I pretty much completely believe this thesis as laid out in the book. But what really strikes me about Vermeer is how he paints a gradation of light on a wall. So I did another little study of the people eating with this in mind.

study

I like how this looks a lot. I need to remember that just the lightest faintest hint of color is as valid as a medium splash of paint. It is easy to wet the brush, splash it in the paint and paint away, but it takes real force of will to get the subtlest hint of color on the white paper.

This is another part of this painting that I want to do. This is to the left of the window where the people are eating; the bricks are part of the restaurant. This is looking across the street at an old building in the snow.

study

I got too bogged down with trying to layer grey on the building. It got too muddy. I like the bricks on the right, and the red mason stones in back around the windows. I was trying different things and got a little too carried away with yellow ochre. It looked really good when there was just one little dab of yellow ochre on the trunk. It looked so good that I thought a few more dabs would look better, but it didn’t.

I’d like to do this painting large scale on watercolor paper, but I likely won’t attempt it until next year because I want everything in it to be perfect and I need to develop some more techniques and get more experience at getting things to look just right – like knowing when to leave just one dab of ochre on the tree.

Here is a series of studies I did after my ‘big’ discovery (read this post for info).

I picked this area of the Main Street in Northampton to work on. Here is the original – just a few inches by a few inches.

Main Street detail

I decided to focus on the little ornamental tree outside the store and came up with this:

tree study

I tried a new technique. I used fresh paint – burnt sienna, aliz. crimson, and medium yellow. I put the paint on somewhat thickly and tried to put no more than 2 brush strokes on with the same color combination at any time, and I didn’t put any two strokes next to each other. I liked how it looked. After it dried I added the darkest parts, but I didn’t like how it looked at the time. So I decided to try again. This time I kept my brush strokes very small, and when I added the darkest strokes, I kept them very small.

tree study

I was much happier with this result – I think it just looks more painterly and interesting. I basically just had the outline on the tree in pencil and mixed varying shades with the three colors on the fly and dabbed here and there using the photo as a reference. I added the darkest color at the end where there were shadows. I don’t remember what the last color was. Maybe ultramarine mixed with burnt umber or sienna.

Below is the tree within the larger painting.

main street in northampton study 2

I tried to use more of a wash technique with the woman to contrast with the heavier tree technique. I wasn’t too happy though with how the face came up. I was trying to do washes to build up different tonal areas, but it seemed like the dark areas werent getting dark enough and I had made the light areas too dark.

I then focused on just the face and gave it this try, but with similar disappointing results:

face study

It seemed a little too worked over for what I was trying to do. I think the dark areas on the photo were very dark, so it didn’t really work trying to make a gradual series of washes to reach that value, and I darkened the light areas too much.

Next I did a little study focusing on the folds of the coat trying to create that puffy parka look:

study of coat

I kind of liked how this one was going–just need to darken the shadow a bit more.

Late in August I had one of those little moments of discovery which I call a ‘big’ discovery since it had to do with scale of paintings, and in particular the paintings of the photorealists. Many photorealist paintings are large scale, often well over 7 feet in length. They are enlarging a small photo to this size. When you see the paintings in a book, the painting is so reduced in size that it looks just like a photo. Much of the ‘abstract’ quality of the painting when seen close up in real life is lost.

Below is a watercolor painting I did in June 2009 of Main Street in Northampton. It is based on a photograph.

Main Street Northampton Watercolor

The whole painting is just 9 by 12 inches. The scale of the painting is about 2 times the actual photo.

Here is a detail from the painting. It is just 2 by 1.5 inches.

detail from Main Street in Northampton

After looking at close-up pictures in a book about Richard Estes I realized that if I were painting in a manner similar to the photorealists the painting of Main Street should be 10 times larger.

So I decided to try to do some paintings that would be more in-line with the large-scale work of the photorealists. But instead of doing a 6 by 8 foot painting, I decided to just paint a small excerpt on that larger scale. This painting is below – it is 14 by 10 inches.

Main Street - Faces

So this was a very freeing exercise in that it got me away from my typical very small brush strokes. I was able to focus a little more on tonal values since each ‘value area’ was larger on the paper, and I could explore them easier.

This is a picture from August of the watercolor painting of the Empire State Building. I didn’t document too much of the progress of it other than the previous posts on the windows. I don’t recall too much of the process after that. I touched up a few things and will get a picture of the final painting soon. This was more of a study to me than a completed painting. A few things that I didn’t like were how I rushed the putting the windows in the actual Empire State Building. I could fix that because the ESB should probably be a little bit darker in value, and that would ghost out the hastily painted windows.

Empire State Building watercolor

I’m back to blogging after taking the summer off (from blogging – not art). I will hopefully get caught up with everything I did over the summer in the following series of posts, though it might take a few days.

I was having trouble with the windows on some buildings in the Empire State Building painting (see previous post). I decided to ‘posterize’ the photo in Photoshop that I was using as a guide to the painting. I reduced the photo to three shades of gray. I hoped that this would at least help me see the tonal values better.

posterized windows esb painting

This showed me that the window ‘panes’ had all tonal value in different degrees, and in some cases the outlines to the window were evident. So I would have to find a way to include those outlines in some places. Usually I have tried this by painting the building color and then the window pane color, THEN adding the lines around the window – but I never liked this because I felt it looked too cartoon-like.

Also, I saw how much light value was in the windows, so I started to mess around with painting in some opaque white paint instead of trying to preserve the white of the paper. Then I got the idea to get some small flat brushes – I got a 2, a 4 and a 6. I tried painting a rectangle in dark with the 4 brush for the whole window, then I would go in with the 2 brush with a lighter color mixed with opaque white and put in the pane of glass, leaving the previously painted part for the frames around the window. This worked pretty good. It gave me more control of the whole window making process. Below is my study of this:

window study with small flat brushes

So with this ‘discovery’ I felt pretty good about moving forward with this part of the painting.

Below is a close up of this part of the painting. This was taken in August – I think I worked it a little more, but I don’t have a picture after the final touches, and the painting isn’t here right now.

Close up of windows in ESB Painting

So I was pretty happy with this resolution and picked up a technique to put in some windows, even if it meant using opaque white.

windows in 1st study

ABOVE: This is how the windows came out in the initial study I did for the Empire State Building painting I am working on. These buildings are medium depth between some close up street signals and the far away Empire State Building. In my photo there are a lot of reflections and details including black around the panes of glass etc. In this study I didn’t worry too much about them, concentrating more on the colors of the buildings. I thought they were ok, but wanted to improve for the final painting.

windows study

ABOVE: On this one I was actually trying on the windows. I did different things here and there to see what would work. But nothing really worked. Putting the dark around the windows made them look like cartoons. Plus that level of detail is more detail than the street signals have, and those are a lot closer. This seemed a mess, plus how am I agoing to get any suggestion of the various facades and shadows on the buildings?

Back to the windows, I thought I could get a China marker to blot them out and then paint over them to preserve their whiteness. I had decided against frisket because I could just as easy paint around them like I did in the first picture, plus I don’t like how frisket gives odd edges on smaller areas.

So this is what happened with the China marker:

windows with china marker

An interesting effect, but it’ll completely be out of place with those blotty edges ( I went in with a dark color around the china marker after the initial wash). Plus it looks kind of frantic and cartoon like and will be out of place with the rest of the painting.

I think I have to do another study similar to the first – not too much detail.

Anyway, here is where I am at with the painting so far; The ONE WAY sign is pointing to where these buildings are in the painting.

Empire State Building watercolor in progress