January 25

Graphic L.A. 38-53

Perspective is more important than the actual objects.  Plus simple design forced into fewest values.  One thing that helps me when I am painting/drawing is to step back to get a better understanding of the piece as a whole and ask yourself if it is working or not.   Starting with as few basic values possible will help in getting you where you want to go.

(painting by Timur Akhriev)

pages 54-77

Graphic in nature, dimensional in execution.  Here are two digital paintings by Robh Ruppel himself illustrating this graphic idea where our dimension is developed by our course of action and developing process of the piece.

  

It is about the piece as a whole.  It is not about each little piece but the idea behind them.  I like that he says when you are sketching from life do copy exactly but alter the values so to grasp the design, "that makes the scene easiest to read,"  stating the intent of the piece. (page 62)  Along with altering values you can alter shapes/objects in the picture to create a more logical and balanced composition.

First flat color then form.  Digitally Robh will lay in color and then go into more depth with form.  He also says to emphasize rhythms.  "Everything is an EXCUSE to show depth, overlap, and form." 

(page 68)  Think of and use simple shapes to block out a cloud or building in preliminary stages.  

January 23

Graphic L.A. pages 18-37

I am continuing Robh Ruppel's book Graphic L.A.  In order to capture what we see, draw, create a masterpiece, understand value and shape etc. finding the value pattern is important.  That doesn't mean, 'just "copying."' It means using design and choices that will best achieve this.

He claims that, "Good design contrasts the area of visual rest with visual complexity." (page 22) I am not quite sure what this means; however by looking at his examples he seems to be saying that good design comes when you can create the complex scene with as simple and minimal shapes possible but still arrive at the desired outcome.

shape/design = large rhythms

form = contours/etching/hatching

Thumbnails are the key to exploration and new ideas.  Thumbnails and preliminary work should take as much time as it does to actually do the painting itself.  Can you achieve the design with just two values?  Establish the darkest dark and lightest light first and then go from back to from slowly putting in other values.

Elements of Color

Studying about color from James Gurney's book of Color and Light chapter 4.

Along with primary colors, the greek and romans use to think that green should be a primary color.  In fact, today, "many modern psychologists and color theorists regard it as a primary color." (pg. 82)

The primaries: red, yellow, and blue 

Complements: opposite one another on color wheel

Hue: where it appears around the edge of the color wheel

Chroma: the intensity of a color; how pure or grayed down it is (vertical line- page 76)

Value: the range of intensity of a color (horizontal line- page 76)

Tint: the amount of white in a color; adding more white is great to make things disappear into the background; to make strong tints appealing it helps to add darker colors to create contrast.

• a tint can be made in 2 ways:  1. adding white, which will make a color a bit bluer or 2. light lay a thin layer of a color over white however this usually creates highly chromatic tints.

Red and Yellow are actually a lot closer on the color wheel than just spread out as thirds.  

The Munsell System: Albert Munsell developed a color wheel ten colors

Printing/Photography primaries:  cyan, magenta, and yellow and black (CMYK)

Primaries of Light:  RGB- red, green, and blue are the primaries of light as apposed to pigment

    "Lighting designers and computer graphic artists consider RGB as their primaries, and CMY as their secondaries."

Gurney says to think of Yellow, Red, Magenta, Blue, Cyan, and Green as the six primary colors. (YRMBCG)

"Should painters adopt this six-primary color wheel?" (pg. 75)

Local color: the color of the surface of an object as it appears close up in white light; when painting a subject it is important to observe all the reflecting lights around it that shift or change the local color.

• Grays and Neutrals, according to Gurney, are "an artists best friend." (pg. 80)  Most paintings fail because of too much intense color instead of too much gray.  Grays give space and scope to a painting.  There are many different grays that help a painting connect other colors.  To create grays it is better to mix complementary colors rather than white and black; then placing color accents near the gray will harmonize the colors because the gray contains some of that color.

Why is Green a Problem?

It is such an interesting color that many artists feel is too much.  Green paintings or covers as said by many, "don't sell."  For years it has been a color mosts artists fear to tamper with but Gurney claims that if greens are greyed down we can learn to use them skillfully.  He gives four tips on how to use the color green:

1. Avoid putting green on your palette, just mix yellows and blues.
2. Vary your greens from leaf to leaf and tree to tree.
3. Smuggle reds... weave in pinks and reds to make the greens pop where needed and pulled back where needed.
4. Prime the canvas with pinks or reds so that they show through here and there to enliven greens.

An example I thought of was one of Bob Barrett's where uses red as an undertone to make green pop when needed.  Here are two examples:

He then goes on to talk about gradation.  Gradation is space with change, from one color to the next, from one saturation to the other, etc.  They do not just happen, they require meticulous thought.