Speed Still Life!

Last week in Nicole's class we ended early, so we only had 2 hours. Since painting faster or limiting my amount of time has seemed to produce more fresh-looking paintings for me, I decided to try to paint a large chunk of the set-up as fully as I could.
I was actually surprised at how much I got done. Then again, there's not too much detail. Ah well, I did learn a lot with this one.

I like to think that this is a courtroom scene taking place among the objects. The vase is the judge, the plate of fruit the jury, and the lone peach in the blue bowl is the witness on the stand. The yellow vase and the white jar are the lawyers, and the red apple is the defendant. They're all arguing fiercely as the three lemon up in the audience are gossiping about whether or not he's guilty.

I ended up using only a corner of the huge canvas, and I kind of like the way nothing blends into something:

Kite Layout Rough Drawing

After much ado (consisting of film studies, thumbnails, prop designs, silhouettes, perspective grids, and tears of frustration), I finally landed on what I think will pass for a composition.

Here is a rough drawing of the layout. Right now the main purpose is to check that the composition works, evokes the right emotion, and leads the eye. The drawing itself was done hastily :)
When I take it to a finish I suppose I'll work out some better designs, and spend a little more time drawing!

Lastly, I painted three different potential lighting layouts, obviously very rough. Just to get some ideas...

Final Ragneau Layout!

Sooooo this layout was "in the works" for about 3 months...because I dropped it after burning out on the painting part...ugh. Took SO long! But now it's mostly done, so I'm just gonna post it :)
I still need to work on the shading for the chest in the foreground, and maybe mess with the colors to unify it some more, but forget that for now. I'm done.

I slapped on an adjustment layer to boost the blue in all the shadows, to bring the colors together. Then I did a perfunctory pass with a mask to desaturate all the areas except the focal point. Done. Cheeeaaah!

Still Life...again!

More still life from Nicole's class.
These were both done in about 2.5 hours. Nicole wanted me to practice going faster and painting more organically...because when I practice the "massing" technique, I tend to get too methodical about it and turn my paintings into big abstract jigsaw puzzles that look awful until the very last 15 minutes when everything comes together...
Let's just say these two were a lot more fun to paint.

Choosing Your Composition...

For Still Life Painting last Thursday, I chose to paint a scene that wasn't officially part of the setup. This onion was leftover and was laying on top of extra fabric at the base of one of the stools we use to set the plants and vases on.

As I looked at the scene, I noticed a couple of interesting compositional points (through my viewfinder made of masking tape...)

1. The shadow shapes all form triangles pointing to the onion (squint until the picture becomes simple dark and light shapes...then notice what they are doing)
2. The saturation and contrast are intense near the onion (I could have pushed this a lot more, desaturating the BG a little more...like that stool...)
3. The lines of the fabric form a sharp angle at the onion, which (according to Will) draw the eye in and stop it. In opposition, the lines formed by the vase and the shadow shapes are all curving, which move the eye past them swiftly. (Again, that stool is battling for attention due to the sharp angles of its legs, but oh well...)
4. The elements, entry and exit points, are mostly placed along the most pleasing proportions (Will says they are: 1/3-2/3. 60-40, 50-50, and 80-20)

All in all, I was thinking, "How can I compose this picture so that the viewer knows exactly where to look?"

Birthday Girl Sketch

My best friend just turned 21...in Seattle! Since I couldn't be there for her birthday, I got a picture of what she wore on her birthday and did a quick photoshop sketch to commemorate it.

This sketch was inspired by the amazing art of Elsa Chang, who does these cute, clean little fashion sketches. I've been wanting to try out the style for a while now.

Lions and Tigers and Pears, Oh My!

Tasty Melons and Shiny Grapes!

A second still Life from Nicole's class. She's the best. Her teaching has really helped me out. In fact, I used a lot of her concepts of "massing" and working the hard v. soft edges in my landscape painting from this weekend (see below :D).

After painting this, I ate the melon slice...Yum!

First Plein Air Painting!

The title pretty much says it all. My friend Haley, also an artist, called me up and asked if I wanted to go out and paint nature. I had always thought I'd get around to it, but to actually go and DO it? Wow! Yes! I was really glad she called :)

So we packed our bags, boards, brushes, and canvases, and drove to the Arroyo Seco under the Colorado St. Bridge. After walking the path for a bit we saw a gorgeous little bit of the stream with rocks and waterfalls, rolled our pants up, and took off through the mud, trees, spiderwebs, and streambeds. After trekking through nature for a few minutes, we reached our chosen spot and settled in on two rocks at the edge of the stream. I happened to look up and notice that the branch near me framed Haley so nicely...and I decided to put Haley in my first landscape painting :D...heehee.

Anyways, it was a total joy to sit with my feet in the mud (literally) and paint under the sun and trees. We took breaks to explore and do...nature-y things!

Here's the painting:

I don't know how I feel about that tree..
Anyways, here's a snapshot from my iPhone of what I was looking at while painting:

Still Life Painting Class!

This summer I'm taking 5 classes at the Guild. One of them is "Painting the Still Life" with instructor Nicole Duet. The first day of class was awesome...because Nicole is one of the best painting teachers I've ever had! She's so sweet and kind, but also so good at what she does. To top it all off, however, she actually teaches much more than many other instructors do. She gave us a long demo in the morning and explained everything she was doing--from which brushes and paints she used, how she set up her canvas, how often and when she used her mediums, what mediums to use, how much of them to use, etc etc etc.

Her clear explanation of a lot of the basics of painting was like a breath of fresh air! It was really refreshing to hear someone explain WHY we paint the way we do, and how to do some of the things that I'd only SEEN other instructors do but never learned how or why to do them myself.

Anyways, here was a quick value study of a couple of lemons. Enjoy.

Kitcheny Props

...Not kitschy. One hopes!

Anyways, I wanted to try doing some digital prop sketches, and soon realized that black and white is just too boring. If I turn this whole Ragneau thing into a portfolio page, these will be great decor!

Cave Lighting Keys

In preparation for submitting my portfolio to Disney, I did up some quick tonal paintings of my cavern layout, showing a different lighting scheme in each one. The idea came from Will--he mentioned that a student of his did this for 4 different layouts, with 4 different lighting schemes for each, and that it got him an internship at Pixar. I think the idea is to show that you can light a composition from any which way you choose...demonstrate versatility, etc.

I like how, using only light and shadow, you can communicate three completely different ideas, or moods, through the same layout.

Full painting to come later...

Cavern Rough Lighting Keys

Will says there's only 6 possible combinations for landscapes with a clear foreground, middleground, and background. You're gonna have light, medium, and dark tones, so there you go.

I'm working on some lighting keys for the cave layout, so I whipped this up quickly to give myself a basic schematic of what the different possibilities are (not accounting for unnatural or unusual lighting situations--lanterns, fairy dust, etc.)

Mostly for me but also for you to see how one layout can look so different...tone really matters!
FYI if you really want to see the difference, I'd suggest opening the image in a new tab, zooming in, and then focusing on each different layout. Looking at them all together boggles the mind...

Texture Practice

I've always wanted to experiment with different styles of coloring and 'painting' in Photoshop. Other styles, that is, aside from brush-based painting. I found this awesome tutorial about how to make shape and texture based paintings, and did a short test on a very simple sketch.

Here's the result. I'm going to add in some more elements, but I need to get more comfortable manipulating the masking in PS before I continue. Gotta find some more tuts!