I've been on a bit of a charcoal kick lately. Charcoal is a fast, expressive medium that also allows for detail and a full range of values which makes it especially good for sketching but also very good for drawing. I decided to make a new video featuring a rural landscape.
This drawing is based on a photo I took in the small rural Utah town of Oakley. Oakley is a bit secluded, while it's just a few miles from a major highway it's on a small highway that gets little traffic. Oakley is typical of a lot of small, rural towns in Utah, nestled in mountains, full of small farms and ranches and dotted with old wood barns.
I shot video while making this drawing. I talk about my materials and process in this video and then talk about my thoughts on "story" or narrative in landscape art.
I have two new charcoal drawings to share along with a video.
"Shadow Ditch" Charcoal, 8" X 10"
This drawing is based on a photo I took while walking the Jordan River Parkway. The "JRP" is a trail system that runs from Utah Lake in the south down to the Great Salt Lake in the north along the Jordan River. This appears to be some kind of irrigation ditch that is in danger of becoming overgrown by vegetation but that makes for an interesting scene.
"Rural Autumn Bushes" Charcoal, watercolor, pastel 8" X 10"
This charcoal drawing is a little different in that it is mixed media while still being primarily a charcoal drawing. I started with subtle washes of watercolor, followed by charcoal drawing and finished off with some color highlights using pastel. The scene is somewhere in rural Utah, I don't remember exactly where. The season is late autumn and so there is little foliage left and the skies are gloomy, a perfect subject for charcoal.
I shot video of the creation of this drawing, watch it below.
I don't make videos often anymore. They take a fair bit of time to make and they haven't been getting many views, but I do think it's worthwhile to make one every now and then anyway. I did decide to make a video this week, but with a slight twist. I demo a small charcoal landscape drawing, I talk about the tools I use and about the scene itself and where I found it, and then the twist, I give a brief history of my art "career" and then talk a little philosophy, the "why" of making art. Give it a watch, it might actually be worth a few minutes of your time.
It's been a while since I made a video, finally got around to it this week. I made a loose, even semi-abstract sketch of a 1932 Ford roadster hot rod using vine charcoal, regular charcoal blocks and pencils and tinted charcoal. I also used alcohol to create splashes and drips.
Sometimes you need to acknowledge that something you are doing really isn't right for you and change direction. No, I'm not quitting my art. No, I'm not going to start doing pet portraits. I am going to stop making "watch me paint" videos. Instead I'm going to use YouTube as more of a vlogging platform. That doesn't mean I'll never demo my process again, it just means that won't be my focus. In my first vlog I explain my reasons for not making "watch me paint" videos anymore.
In a nutshell, painting as performance is rather distracting and gets in the way of my creativity and I would really rather be doing just about anything than edit a video. In this first vlog I also talk about the "Blue 1950 Chevy Custom" painting I showed you in my last blog post.
These vlogs won't be scripted, edited and highly polished, but rather raw, with little or no editing, (because I'd really rather be painting). What you will be getting is insights into my paintings, my process and my personal history and motivation for what I do. If my art interests you I hope that will interest you as well.
What does that mean for this blog? Well, I'll still post here, but many if not most posts will basically be a synopsis of my latest vlog, not always, but probably more often than not. Though I'll also post relevant images and links in those posts as well so there will still be value in checking out my latest blog posts here as well as subscribing to my YouTube channel.
Okay, here's a little bonus, or maybe not. Anyway, here's a photo of me self quarantining in my studio. I hope I didn't startle you too badly.
Well, look at that, only three days since my last blog post. I have actually been meaning to post every Wednesday and Sunday, and I did that more or less for a month then lost my way for nearly a month, let's see how long I can stay on track this time.
You often hear about "balance" in compositions for paintings and drawings. Most of the time paintings are not symmetrical, so what makes for a balanced composition? I have to admit I can't explain the principle in general terms, at least not very well. When I am presented with a reference photo to consider for a painting, balance is one of the first things I consider, however I think it's become somewhat intuitive for me after reading so many books (Edgar Payne's book on composition is one of the best for this) and looking at so many master and professional paintings, composition and balance have become somewhat ingrained in my psyche.
I can say this however, balance boils down to shapes, their size, their value and their placement in the composition. However hue and saturation can sometimes play their part, but if the other factors aren't right, adjusting hue and/or saturation are not likely to help much to correct poor balance.
"Neglected"
Here is my latest landscape All of the elements you see in this painting were also in my reference photo but I adjusted their placement and shapes. I made the outside poplar tree taller than the one closer to the middle, the opposite was true in the photo. Notice that the peak of the barn roof is offset to one side, that was the case in the photo, this seems to be a common design, why I don't really know, but it does make for a more interesting design and in this case helps to balance the composition. If the peak of the barn was right on the center of the barn I'd have to move the barn over to the left more and maybe make it a bit taller to balance the composition, assuming I left the poplars as is.
That takes care of horizontal balance, but what about vertical? I'm not sure it would be considered balance but the composition is divided pretty much in thirds, the grass, then the barn and hills, and the last third, the sky. However maybe that's too "balanced" and if there was one thing I'd maybe do differently if I did it over it would be to move the barn and hills down a bit and reduce the grassy area.
If you would like to watch a video of me making this painting you are in luck, there's one on YouTube, click and watch now.
I've been slacking with my posting lately, sorry about that, and this one is going to be a short post, sorry about that too, but at least I'm giving you a video to watch to give you something to occupy 15 minutes of your stay at home time.
This painting is based on a photo I took at a big car show last year. The car was built at a shop in Grantsville, Utah and is a bit famous having been published in Wheel Hub magazine so I stayed pretty true to the colors and features, of course the palette knife applied layers made it more abstract, but it's still quite obvious that it is a 1932 Ford hot rod. Here's the finished painting;
Another week on YouTube and three more videos to share with you.
This one is a little different in that it's a sketch instead of a painting. I use a Copic Multiliner pen and Tombow brush pens to do a simple black and white sketch of an old, abandoned Chevy farm truck. I saw and photographed this truck in Wallsburg, Utah.
I stepped up the complexity on this one a bit by adding a couple barns to make this a rural landscape. Structural objects with well defined shapes can actually be a bit of a challenge to paint with palette knives. I also approached the process just a bit different. I did make a brush underpainting, intstead I blocked the painting in using a more thin layer of paint using the knife. The painting is loosely based on a photo I took in Spring City, Utah.
This one bumped up the difficulty level considerably. Barns are relatively simple shapes, but old vehicles are quite complex. I decided to take that challenge on anyway by painting an abandoned early 1950's Chevy truck in an open grassy field. Barns are primarily straight lines and very geometric without many details, whereas an old truck can have organic curves and lots of details. This one really pushed my skills, especially since I had to do it in one sitting under a camera. The truck that served as the model for this composition was based on a photo I took at the Erickson Ranch in Wallsburg, Utah during the Antique Power Show.
That's this week's videos, I hope you watch and enjoy them. If you do please click the "like" button, and if you want to be alerted to new videos when they come out hit the subscribe button and the "bell" notification icon. Also, I'd very much appreciate any comments. Thanks.
If so, now you can! That's right, I've started a YouTube channel. My videos will all be painting demonstrations, now you'll be able to watch my process from start to finish.
Click here to go to my YouTube channel
As for the day of this post I have three videos uploaded. The first was just a short time lapse of a landscape painting of open country using palette knives.
The second video is a long format of the first, I even include commentary for a couple minutes at the beginning where I talk about my reference photograph, my composition decisions and show you my palette and name off the colors I use.
The third video is a mix of the first two styles but is a different painting, a back country autumn scene. There is no commentary on this one and it's shorter because much of it is sped up a bit but parts of it run in real time as well.
I plan on making two videos a week to be published on Wednesday and Sunday. I'll also upload the occasional bonus sketch demonstration video. If you enjoy these videos make sure you "Like" them, "Share" them and subscribe and click the bell icon if you want to be notified when I put up new videos.
