I worked again on my urban landscape painting this morning. I’m struggling with getting the shaded areas cool and the lit areas warm. But it feels good to know what the painting needs. The worst part is looking at a painting and not knowing where to go with it and only knowing that it needs more work. I think when I’m done these could be strong paintings and I don’t want to give up until I get there.
I found an Urban Sketching group on Facebook and joined. It will be cool to get together with them and do some sketching. I was scrolling Instagram and a painter I follow posted about their get-together last week and I realized that’s something I could use in my life. The next meet up is in September so I’ll see if I can make it. I usually have things to do Saturday mornings but if I end up liking the group I think I’ll make arrangements to be meet up regularly.
Yesterday I walked down to Woodlawn Lake with my new viewfinder to do some sketching. I’m reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and she suggests using a glass or plexiglass viewfinder. You hold it up to a subject and draw the imagine in marker on the glass. That way you get a sense of the proportions before attempting to draw it on paper. I toned the paper before I started drawing and used darker pencils and an eraser to make the images. I think I need to do that more often so I can get a better sense of values. It’s hard to draw different shades of green without color.
There’s still so much to learn. I’ve been studying drawing and painting for so long, I even remember doing one of the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain exercises in college 25 years ago, but I still want to improve. I want to find ways to be the best artist I can be. I studied photography in school. Back then it was film photography. We shot film and developed it in the darkroom. That’s really what I loved. I think I would still love it. When everything went digital I felt brokenhearted. It was a painful loss and I often wonder where I would be if things hadn’t changed.
In studying photography you study composition and light, so I had a lot of years learning about composition. In painting we talk about values instead of contrast, but it’s the same thing. In photography the trick was to capture contrast and to play with it in the darkroom until it was just right, until it made the image you were going for. In painting the goal is to mix the values in paint which I still struggle with. First you have to see contrast, then you have to figure out how to mix those colors. It’s tricky sometimes.
I’m also learning by studying other painters. Right now I’m reading a biography about Thomas Eakins. Some of his paintings are mind-blowing. It’s helpful to learn about great artists lives. Thomas Eakins was not only a great artist but spoke several languages fluently (and apparently without accents), and knew a great deal about science and anatomy. It sounds like he could have studied any subject he wanted and been successful. But he chose art, which I find inspiring. Right now I’m enamored with his painting The Artist’s Wife and His Setter Dog. The expression on her face and the detail of her dress and the rug are amazing.
Earlier in the summer I read a biography about Andrew Wyeth. I tried to find one about Edward Hopper but the library didn’t have any, so I moved on the Thomas Eakins. John Singer Sargent is next. I love realism but I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a realist painter. I feel like it’s just where I am today. Who knows where my journey will take me, but for now I’m focused on painting realistic images. It’s probably what’s pushing me to get batter at drawing and seeing/mixing values.