SOLD Here's one of the tonal excercises i did this week. beginning artists (and experienced too!) should do more excercises i think. i took a photo reference, turned it into black and white, painted tones of black white and gray on it. then i resketched it and painted colors from memory that matched the black and white tonal study. here's what i came out with. showing that color is secondary to values when painting a representational piece of art.
Beware EDITORIALIZING AHEAD!
i have had a lot of workshop students that were eager to get the excercises i have them do in class over as quickly as possible. they want to get on with the "good stuff"= as in the "painting". this is the wrong approach, i think, in a workshop environment. here you have folks that on average paint once or twice a week (if that) eager to pay upwards of $75 per day to go out and paint one, maybe two, paintings in the field. they want some help with values, color etc and to get a critique of the finished product.
Count that up! thats $35 per painting for some help and instruction on ONE painting. But for the most part they are painting for two hours (each) the way they would have on their own.
so they gain very little this way. how much better would it be to learn new stuff for four hours and practice it, doing excercises that will make your painting better when you do actually step up to the plate out there on their own. taking a finished painting home should never be more important than learning how to do a bunch of nice ones once the workshop is over. but thats just me.
comments are welcome. lets have a discussion of this. i'd like to hear your views on this.
2 comments:
So true Mike... your challenge of 100 paintings (if you're still doing that) holds credence... I'm a prime example of that. Last year I painted 200 works after your challenge. Before I took your workshop I was spending thirty hours on one painting... now I'm spending one hour on thirty paintings... and what a difference that has made in my work. Thanks...
Bern
i've even added an incentive to the challenge to students. i say "if you paint 100 paintings in around 5 or 6 months and youre not 100% better i'll refund to you the workshop fee"
now hows that for confidence *)
if you did anything that many times you'd be very good at it right?
that was the first workshop i ever taught and you took the challenge because you (and i) want to paint better and better everyday.
i'll take persistence over raw talent any day.keep up the awesome work youre doing. i'm watching your ebay sales as much as mine *)
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