PaintboxJ Art Critique

Transcription

Art Critique
Jeremy shares in-depth, constructive suggestions and feedback
June 2010
Timeless Beauty by Lucy Unsworth, Parkland, Florida
Figure 1 Timeless Beauty © 2010 Lucy Unsworth
PaintboxJ Art Critique © 2010 Jeremy Sutton
All written material and artwork is copyright by the author/artist/source as indicated and may not be distributed, reproduced, used
for commercial purposes, or altered to create derivative works. This document is for educational use only.
The Artist’s Description of their Artwork:
Context, Process & Questions
I was hired to do a photo session with the client in my studio in South
Florida. Maggie did the shoot with her best friend Scarlet. She wore several
different outfits. I told her that I was going to paint my favorite photo of
her. This is the one I selected. I chose this photo because if was sexy,
glamorous and I loved the way Scarlet fit in with the theme – beauty is
timeless.
I have been working with Painter with a few years and each time I open
the program I find something new! I am always learning. I am a
photographer and was really doing paintings for my self. My work
continues to transition toward a style that is my own. Below, I refer to the
artist Pino. I would say that his style is what I strive for. I love his work … For
me his work has the loose strokes, attention to light and color.
I believe that as the business of photography changes, my hope is move
into painting exclusively.
Here are the steps with the best I can remember.
æ
Figure 2
Maggie 1 orig
æ
I started out in Photoshop with the basic workflow, which includes;
basic color correction, skin, eyes, lips retouch, skin softening and curves.
†
Figure 3
Maggie sketch
†
I created a sketch – using the Photoshop filter “Stylize” > “Find
Edges” - and then applied curves, also in Photoshop, to reduce lines and
changed it to black and white. My rational for doing this is that I am not a
traditional artist but I want to start out like with an sketch so I have the
same feeling in my approach to the work. That’s is starting with a sketch. I
also use a black and white version so I can look at the tones in the photograph.
ÿ
ÿ
I then brought my photo into Painter. I created a blank background
and copied my sketch into the background. I really can’t remember if I
added a color to the background – I had no idea what color I wanted.
Ý
Then I took out my book entitled “Pino, Contemporary Realism” I
really love his approach to painting. He has strong backgrounds with
earth tones that just stand out for their strength. I played around with colors I thought would fit the subjects and give me strong texture.
¨
¨
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Figure 4 Maggie Background
¨
¨
Then I started to paint the background with my sketch layer unchecked so the photo would not influence me. I know I used Shirley’s
DryEdge (in JeremyGuestFaves4 brush category) with various opacities,
Sherron’s Blender Wood (in JeremyFaves2 brush category) and the
sponges.
Figure 5 Maggie Bringing back
z
z
Using the original photo as my clone source and the sketch
checked I began to bring in the photo of Maggie and Scarlet.
Figure 6 Maggie Skin and furs
Then I began to work on the skin, clothing, fur, and Scarlet. I don’t clone a
lot because I would simply get confused. I do make clones when I do
something very different and want to be able to go back if I want to. As
you can see in the original photo of Maggie, I gave her hair more volume
since I thought was a little flat.
Figure 7 Maggie background2
I returned to the background using several layers to achieve the strokes
that emulate Pino. Not sure if I achieved that and I continue to practice to
make it better. But, I liked it. I used the Artist Oils. I used a variety of variants
within Artist Oils Category, especially the Clumpy brush. I finished the skin
with a very light touch of the airbrush.
Using multiple layers I utilized several variants in the Impasto category to
achieve a thick textured background. I really like the Impastos but I use
them with great temperance.
I then brought the painting into PS. There I used the transform tool on her
eyes to give them a slightly wider look and applied curves and selectively
sharpened the painting including the impasto layers.
I printed it as a 30x36 and in the process of adding oils to the painting.
Jeremy’s Response
Lucy, thank you for sharing this artwork and explaining your
process so eloquently. I’d like to start off by sharing details of
three paintings featured in the book you referred to, “Pino:
Contemporary Realism”.
Figure 8 Detail from The Yellow Rose © Pino
Figure 9 Detail from Flamenco Girl © Pino
Figure 10 Detail from Dressing Up © Pino
There are certain key elements in Pino’s style that are common
to almost all his paintings. They include the following:
• Bold, interesting, asymmetric compositions with strong
abstract qualities and in which the backgrounds play an
important role.
• Strong tonal contrasts in which there are really solid dark
regions adjacent to well-defined highlight regions.
• Wide range and diversity of color throughout the painting.
• Bold, intense, often primary, colors used in contrast
against regions of more subdued, less intense colors.
• Confident, visible, distinct, gestural brushwork that
conveys movement and energy, with the largest
brushstrokes in the background followed by the clothing
followed by the hair followed by the skin.
• Wonderful variation of edges with some edges smooth
and sharply defined and others rough and distressed.
• Loose brushwork across the canvas that ties the
composition together as a whole and places the subjects
firmly within their environments.
• Thick, textured, impasto brushwork that adds a sculptural
quality to the artwork.
Lucy, your painting is a lovely representation of your subject
and her adorable dog. My suggestions in this critique are based
on your expressed desire to emulate the style of Pino, and are
aimed at suggesting ideas that can make your future projects
better and more “Pino-like”.
Bold compositions in camera
Let’s start by considering your source image. Much of Pino’s
work is based on photographic reference. Pino takes great
care over his sets for his photo shoots. He carefully arranges
everything, paying great attention to details, physically placing
furniture, flowers and other objects around his subjects to
create engaging and interesting compositions. If you look
through the “Pino: Contemporary Realism” book you’ll notice in
almost every painting how important a role the background
environment plays in the strong compositions. I am missing that
in your source photograph. In your source you isolated your
subjects against a white background, thus losing the golden
opportunity to generate a Pino-esque composition in your
camera lens. By not having a great background and
environment in your source photograph that places your
subjects in context, you are forced to play catch-up in the
digital world and make up a background from imagination.
When drawing or painting from a live model it helps to only
make marks when you are observing your subjects so that you
really portray what is there, not what you think is there. In a
parallel way when working from photos in Painter is helps to
portray your subject based on what is actually captured rather
than making it up. This is not to say that there is no role for free
form and imagination. However it helps start with the most
information you can as a reference, even if you then choose to
discard, change or ignore some of it.
When you look through your camera view finder think
wholistically, not just about capturing your subjects but about
the whole frame composition, right up to the edges of your
frame. In other words photograph with a painting in mind. Try
looking around and seeing painting compositions, even without
a camera. This will all make a big difference when it comes to
capturing a source image for the purposes of painting.
Non-centered and non-symmetric compositions
Notice how Pino’s compositions are usually asymmetric and
have interesting negative shapes (i.e. those cut out around the
main subject) intersecting with the edge of the canvas. His
compositions have strong abstract qualities. In your
composition your subjects are centered with space all around
them. Experiment with cropping in and/or adding extra canvas.
You’ll find you can make much more powerful and dramatic
compositions on your canvas that way.
Strong tonal contrasts
Your source photograph is high key with mostly white or light
tones and almost no deep shadows. Compare this to how
strong the contrasts are between the highlights and dark
shadows on Pino’s subjects faces. The light in Pino’s work
conveys the impression of natural light, as if from the sun
streaming in through a window. His choice of lighting,
frequently from a ¾ or sideways light source, casts strong
distinct shadows on his subject’s skin. This lighting allows him to
model the three dimensions of his subjects with use of lights and
darks and the gradations between them. Notice in your source
photograph how the light on Maggie’s face, and across
Scarlet’s body, is almost even– there is no asymmetric play of
light and dark. Thus you are starting at a disadvantage when it
comes to creating a painting in the style of Pino based on this
source photograph.
The Equalize effect (Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-E) in Painter is a way to
automatically widen your range of tone in your image, and
applying this mid-painting can be quite revealing when you
see a big change, indicating that your painting is mostly in the
mid-tones. Ideally, if you have a good source image with really
dark darks and really light lights, and then you depict those
darks and lights in your painting, then the Equalize effect will
not change your painting much. You’ll see a fairly significant
change of your try the Equalize on your final image. This is
because you do not have really strong dark areas in your
composition. That is a perfectly okay stylistic choice but not
one that emulates the Pino style.
Intense, pure colors
To create a painting with a Pino look include bold, intense
colors. Intense color is achieved in the Painter Colors palette by
choosing color in the saturated right side of the Value
Saturation triangle. When you place a critical saturated or
intense brush stroke on your canvas leave it there and resist the
temptation to go back and soften, blend or mush it. One of the
distinguishing features of Pino’s brushwork is the way he allows
his brushstrokes and colors to be pure and distinct on the
canvas. He places a brush stroke and then leaves it.
Variety of colors
Look through the Pino book and observe the choice of clothing
color as well as the colorful elements such as flowers that Pino
uses to enliven his compositions. You will see intense blues, reds,
and yellows. The blues, reds and yellows are known as primary
colors in painting (whereas red, blue and green are primary
colors in the physics of light). Pino also makes use of secondary
colors such as orange (between primaries yellow and red on
the color wheel) and purple (between blue and red), and of
tertiary colors such as magenta and cyan. Look at the Painter
color ring in the Colors palette and you can see these colors
arranged around the ring. The Painter color ring resembles the
traditional artist’s color wheel. For future projects in which you
wish to emulate the style of Pino I encourage you to
experiment more with stronger colors and more variety of color.
I recommend using minimal clone color and allowing yourself
the freedom to mostly add your own varied colors, which can
go far beyond the intensity and diversity of color captured by a
digital camera. Bear in mind when choosing your own colors
you are also trying to preserve the key tonal relationships and
sculpt form with lights and darks. Starting with a strong colorful
source image with strong lighting makes this process much
easier.
More variation in your background brushstrokes
I like the energy you capture in your initial background (Figure
4) and your use of loose, large, rough brush strokes. However,
besides the gradation of tone and color from the left to the
right of your canvas, the direction, size and shape of your brush
strokes in that background is very even and repetitive,
something that is very easy to do with digital paint. By contrast
when using non-digital paint your brush stroke naturally
changes every time you did your brush or knife into the paint. In
Painter you have to make a special effort to continually
change your color, tone and brush stroke. It is very easy to
make identical brush stokes. Compare your background with
the wide range of marks in Pino’s backgrounds. Adding more
variation in your marks is key to creating a more engaging
composition and more dramatic painting.
When you work on your initial “muck-up” underpainting try
using more diversity of brushes – it looks like you just used one
brush for the entire background (Den’s Oil Funky Chunky from
JeremyFaves2?). Try, for instance, mixing in an Artists >
Impressionist and then JeremyFaves2 > Jeremys SumiPollock
Splash. With each brush try getting different types of marks.
With more information in the background of your source photo
you’ll have more to play with when making your varied
brushstrokes so that every brush stroke contributes to describing
something in your composition.
Confident, visible, distinct, gestural, loose brushwork
It looks like you used the Cloners > Soft Cloner to bring back
your main subjects (Figure 5) since there do not appear to be
any visible brush strokes. The result is the appearance of
photographic realism pasted on top of a painted backdrop.
Again look closely to Pino’s paintings and how much bold
visible brush strokes there are within the subjects. He appears to
capture almost photographic detail and smoothness in the
faces of his models and yet does it in a way that is very
painterly. His approach is reminiscent of some of John Singer
Sargent’s commissioned work which also appears deceptively
realistic and yet, when you look close, is very loose and
painterly. You can make a huge impact on the painterliness of
your artwork by introducing looser, bolder and more varied and
dynamic brushwork throughout which will unify the composition
and tie everything together as a whole. Look at the way Pino
does this in his paintings. Loose doesn’t mean chaotic, wild or
random. Make every mark you make on your canvas
intentional and meaningful. That intentionality is what
successfully and iteratively builds up your composition.
Wonderful variation of edges
Observe carefully how much variation Pino has in his contours
and edges. This variation is essential to creating the illusion of
three dimensional reality, with more distant edges fading away,
with the edges of curved forms at times disappearing and
becoming indistinguishable from the backgrounds and at other
times jumping out in sharp stark contrast. In your composition
the edges and contours around your main subjects look even
and uniformly sharp all the way around. This has the effect of
flattening your subjects and gives a “floating cardboardcutout” look that is disconnected from the environment.
Varying your edges will go a long way to resolving this, though
the presence of a solid background environment and context,
along with cast shadows on surrounding objects, a la Pino, will
also help.
Thick, textured, impasto brushwork
Pino allows thick paint to build up on his canvas rather than go
back over it and flatten it. In Painter you can use brushes that
have an Impasto effect that emulates thick three dimensional
texture. Impasto in Painter acts like a layer, though it doesn’t
appear listed in the Layers palette. To “drop” an impasto layer
so you can then distort it and paint over it, just flatten your
image (Drop All) and then save as a TIFF. Close the image and
then reopen it and your impasto will be in the background
canvas, not on a layer. You also have the ability to artificially
add impasto-like texture using the Effects > Surface Control :
Apple Texture with the Using menu set to Image Luminance.
You can also choose to wait until post-print painting and then,
after printing out on canvas, add thick textured paint onto your
canvas. Post-print painting techniques will be the subject of an
upcoming PaintboxJ video tutorial. They are also covered in
Painter 11 Creativity: Digital Artist’s Handbook and in my
workshops. All the general comments in this critique can be
applied equally to non-digital paint as to digital paint.
I hope all these suggestions are helpful and not too
overwhelming! Don’t feel you have to try and master
everything at once. Take your time. Start with one idea and
experiment with it and then move onto another. Please let me
know how you get on.
Happy painting!
Cheers,

PaintboxJ Art Critique

Transcription

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